


half

by Asexual_Ravioli



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Body Horror, Child Abuse, Childhood, Childhood Romance, F/F, Harm to Animals, Heavy Angst, Multimedia, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2020-07-23 21:15:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20014909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asexual_Ravioli/pseuds/Asexual_Ravioli
Summary: What tasted right, what made her eyes roll back into her head, was Mikasa.





	1. swallow

The teacher had learned not to rouse Annie whenever she laid her head on her desk. Because when Annie did so, she was not sleeping. She was too hungry to sleep, the gnawing in her belly trumping the exhaustion of her mind.

When Annie laid her head down, it was in despair. And calculation. Three more hours of class. A half-hour walk home, alone, unless other kids trailed after her. Jeering, giving chase that would end with them holding her down, scraping her cheek into dry grass until they grew tired of her playing possum and left. Unless…unless she managed a rare escape into a field that led to the woods, or a barn she could hide in, squeezing into an impossibly small space in the rafters while they searched in vain.

A thirty-minute walk, forty-five if she dawdled. That would leave about five hours at home, with her father. Eight hours in bed, half of them awake, but only if she was lucky. Then a morning where her father would give her granola and yogurt, an orange for the walk to school.

Yes, he would feed her. Like the other kids. Just no meat. Never. Never any meat.

But she was pulled back in class the moment something impacted the back of her head, accompanied by a kick to her chair. She sat up and turned. Reiner.

The big blonde tilted his head at her, giving her chair another shove with his foot. Ms. Ral was busy showing them how to multiply fractions on the chalkboard.

Annie turned forward fast, her spine ramrod straight.

Laughter followed. Reiner, Eren, maybe Hitch.

Every day the kid who sat behind her changed, a new tormentor with their own style of torture. With Reiner it was more physical. With Hitch, it was spitballs or gum in her hair. Eren prodded at her sides, making her jump or let off a loud yelp that alerted the teacher and caused the room to titter.

Mikasa Ackerman did nothing, but Annie’s neck prickled always with the sense that the girl’s eyes were locked there.

Okay. Annie had decided. For three hours she would stay like this, staring at the board in terror, not absorbing a word.

Class continued without Reiner giving her another jolt. In the meantime she could only try to not think of what she’d feel at home.

They don’t go to church, but her father preaches at her during dinner. They'd pray, sometimes for an hour while their food got cold. He'd squeeze her little hand in his huge one, crushing it white. He is tall but thin, with dark hair and eyes to rival her blonde locks and blue eyes.

Always, she wondered if she looked like her mother, who she has never met.

The hollow planes of her father's face created harsh shadows, sinking his eyes inward. Annie had always thought it was because he didn't eat meat, just like her. They do it for God.

It is a sin to violate God’s innocent creatures.

Nightly Annie trembled in his crushing, bony grip, until at last he'd let go, leaving her to fear broken bones in her throbbing hand. She always wanted to ask him, isn’t she a creature of God?

“Eat,” he'd say at last.

“Because they continued to traffic humans after the Mankind-Coven Truce,” she heard Mikasa say in a dry, authoritative voice.

Annie perked up. Vampire history. Or, what was left of it. It had been a hundred years since any human had seen one in this part of the world.

“That’s right,” Ms. Ral said. “The violation of the treaty revoked their right to the best land, leaving them with the majority of the swampland and tundra terr—”

“But what if they’re still doing it? Trafficking humans,” Historia said, her little hand shooting up at the front of the room.

Ms. Ral shook her head and smiled. “We’re all safe here. They don’t need to traffic. We send…remains as a term of the truce.”

The uncomfortable reality wrapped around them once more. Bodies were not cremated. Bodies were not buried. Annie shuddered. The stories chilled her, especially after discovering the stash of illegal books hidden under the broken floorboard in her father’s study. He _despised_ vampires. Why was he studying them?

“How do we know that they did all this?” Reiner asked from behind. “If so much information about vampire-kind is hidden by the government?”

Weird kid, Annie always thought. Always…defending them. We know enough, she thought. There are _reasons_ it’s illegal to communicate with them. But even as she thought this, she knew she couldn’t pry herself from the secrets in her father’s well-worn books tonight. Was it true that their jaws dislocated when they engorged themselves on…No. She put her head down. Too much thinking about what she should leave alone, about what had nothing to do with her.

Reiner kicked at her chair. She closed her eyes and ignored it.

“Annie, stay a moment,” Ms. Ral said from her desk.

Annie tensed and slunk up to her teacher. The walks to and from school were the best parts of her day, but Ms. Ral was so kind that she didn’t mind delaying it. They waited together for the other kids to leave.

“Annie…Do you want to go to the nurse before you go home? You seem especially worn out today.”

Annie shook her head fast.

_(“Don’t bring outsiders into this.”)_

“Have you ever seen a doctor about this, Annie?” Ms. Ral frowned and tucked a lock of red hair behind her ear, a tell that revealed she was nervous.

“Seen a doctor?” Annie repeated.

_(“Don’t.”)_

“If you’re ill, Annie, there’s med—”

“I’m fine. I’m a vegetarian,” Annie said, a nervous grin coming to her face.

“Yes, I’m aware. So am I,” Ms. Ral answered in a measured tone.

No. Ms. Ral had full cheeks, a slight curve to her hips that said the food stuck there. That was what meat did. That was the only explanation to why Annie was different.

“How…” Annie began. “How do you stand and talk all day?”

Ms. Ral pursed her lips. “Not eating meat wouldn’t make you tired, Annie. And I’ve seen you eat. Salads, nuts, fruits. You have a good diet, but…This is something else.”

There was something wrong with Annie, then. Okay.

“My father will take me to the doctor. I’ll tell him,” she lied.

Ms. Ral eyed her warily. “Very good. Have a nice day, Annie.”

“Thanks. Bye!”

She walked into the hall. She knew Ms. Ral’s type. Someday soon she’d ask for Annie to confide in her, but Annie was supposed to trust in no one but God. At the thought of a higher power, she instantly felt eyes on her back. She slowed to a halt, shoulders stiff.

“Annie,” Mikasa said. “He’d never know. If you tried it.”

“Tried what,” she said flatly.

“Meat.”

“That’s not true,” Annie said, her voice rising. She turned to face her.

Mikasa Ackerman. A lovely, cold little girl with piercing dark eyes and jet-black hair that fell to her collar. She’d never harassed her, but she was there when the others…She was there, and she stood watch. Her back to Annie’s screams.

“You’re just a coward,” Mikasa said, a small smile creeping to her lips. She brushed past Annie, frozen there by that truth.

“I’ll help you, Annie,” Mikasa said over her shoulder. Before Annie could ask how, she’d disappeared.

It didn’t end there. It could never just end there. Because Annie was the sickly kid, beyond scrawny, almost always ill after lunch, pale as a sheet despite the sunlight her father forced her to sit in all summer long, beating into her as she laid prone in the middle of the backyard. In those months she hated the glare of the sun as much as she hated herself. And it was coming. School would be over in less than a month.

But now, it was recess time, and she sat under the tree she wasn’t supposed to sit under. Annie sometimes went through the playground gates when no teachers were looking, a few steps down the sidewalk, into a neighboring yard, the yard of someone else’s house. No one was ever home.

The shade was ample throughout, shielding her from the buzzing heat. The cool, overgrown grass grazed her shins as she walked to her favorite tree. Its bark had molded itself to where the chipped red fences converged into a corner. The low overhang of branches gave her just enough protection to nod off. She shut her eyes as she laid against the rough trunk, a book in her lap. Sometimes, an orange tabby cat would come cuddle against her.

This was, aside from hunger, peace.

Then Annie’s ears picked up a gentle murmur growing closer. Children’s voices, failing to stay hushed in their excitement. Annie opened her eyes but stayed still, instantly alert.

Several figures stood at the gate and entered, trampling over the grass toward her.

Five of them. Hitch, Reiner, Sasha, Eren, Mikasa.

Annie didn’t try to stand. It was too hot. Her suddenly wild pulse made her dizzy.

Usually it was just four of them. No Sasha. But it didn’t matter who. All the students knew this bullying went on. It was just that a lot of them didn’t want to risk showing up. The nice kids. The good kids. Quiet kids like Mikasa's friend Armin who'd be too scared, and too smart, to attack Annie.

They approached with terrible purpose and somber faces. It was only when Annie saw Sasha’s lunch pail that her eyes flew wide in understanding.

“We brought you something!” Hitch said, grinning with some awful secret.

Reiner and Eren grabbed Annie’s arms, pinning them to the tree. Annie grimaced and struggled feebly.

“Hurry,” Eren said as Sasha opened her pail.

Mikasa stood halfway between the tree and the gate, turned away.

“No!” Annie said. “I’m not hungry! I’m never…”

But she could smell it. Hamburger. A scent that had entranced her for years. Rich. Savory. Full.

Sasha removed the thick slice of meat from the bun, shaking off the lettuce and tomato. “You do it,” she said to Hitch.

“This was Mikasa’s idea. Says she’s worried about you,” Hitch said with a grin.

Annie clamped her mouth shut. Hitch grabbed her chin in one hand. “Come on. Eat up.”

Wrenching her whole face away, Annie shut her eyes. That’s when she heard a voice say, “Pry it open. I’ll feed her.”

Hitch’s hands pulled at Annie’s jaws, one palm pushing up at Annie’s nose, the other wrestling with her chin.

In terror, Annie felt her mouth opening. She opened her eyes to see Mikasa coming forward with the meat in her palm.

“Uh-uh! Uh-uh!” Annie said. She began to moan as tears fell down her face.

“I really want you to feel better,” Mikasa whispered, and shoved the food in her mouth.

The succulent taste revived something primal in her, just by lying on her tongue. Suddenly, Annie launched into a surge of strength. She kicked at Hitch, who stumbled backwards. Annie’s mouth clamped down on the food.

And Mikasa’s finger.

Mikasa yelped. Annie snarled and didn’t let go of the index finger halfway in her mouth. She sucked at the juicy blood pouring in rivulets, directly down her throat.

God God God God God…

“Holy shit! Holy shit! Let go!” Hitch said like it was her own flesh being torn.

“No!” Mikasa swatted at Annie’s head. For a few more seconds Annie hung like a wild dog to its prey.

So good. So warm.

It was only when Mikasa shrieked, “You’re really hurting me, Annie!” that she fell back in shock.

Annie swallowed the remaining hamburger and blood in her mouth. “I’m…I’m sorry. I was…” She trembled violently.

“So hungry…” A small, insane chuckle escaped her. She hid her mouth with her hands.

“You’re a whackjob!” Eren said, kicking her in the shin. Annie hardly felt the sting; her eyes were transfixed to the red streaming from Mikasa’s hand.

Reiner stood above her, staring with his mouth slack, shaking his head. “You’re…” he began.

Hitch and Sasha were long gone. Eren was holding Mikasa’s arm.

“Let me see.”

But Mikasa shook her head and clutched her finger to her chest, not taking her eyes from Annie.

“I’m fine. You can finish that, Annie.” She gestured to the half of the burger lying in the grass. She led Eren and Reiner away.

Annie snuck into the butcher shop once, last year. A bloody red haunch of something sat in the display. It was as simple as walking around the empty counter. Sliding the glass door. Grabbing onto the cold, bloody flesh and running as she stuffed it under her hoodie.

People separated on the sidewalk to let her sprint by. She ran into the arcade, into the ladies’ room, and locked herself in a stall. Her hands trembled as she took the meat to her face, eyes closing as she inhaled the scent. Then, she plunged her teeth into it. She was an animal, moaning in ecstasy, as if she had taken down her prey herself.

The red blood, the white, tough fat, giving way in her jaws. The cold juices ran down her face as she tried to catch it in her palms, sucking it in greedily.

She was so _fucking_ hungry.

The rich taste overwhelmed her mouth. She felt energy flowing into her limbs. Her heart thudded faster. It felt…stronger. Before she knew it she had eaten the entire slab. Her mouth dripped with saliva. She panted and laid her forehead on the stall wall. More. More food. More meat.

She staggered out of the arcade. Her body seemed to be adjusting to her new diet. Soon her steps evened out, getting more assured. Her head felt clear. She held it high and went home.

The air immediately went sour when she entered the living room. Her father looked up from his book as Annie’s white Persian cat, Lily, yowled and ran upstairs. He slammed his book shut and was on Annie in seconds, grabbing her by the hoodie to thrust her against the wall.

“Father—”

His thumbs went into her mouth, prying it open.

“Did you eat meat? Did you dare fucking eat meat?”

“What? No! NO!”

There was absolutely no way he could tell she was lying. But he threw her to the floor and pointed at her legs. The blood had flowed down from under the hoodie and onto her light-blue pants.

She thought of health class and came up with a lie. “That…that’s mine it’s just, please, Father, don’t!”

His hand came down across her cheek. Once, twice, three times. He took a fistful of her hair and began to pull her to the empty closet.

For the first time, Annie resisted. Was _able_ to resist. She pulled herself to the floor, feeling her hair tearing. He aimed a kick at her gut, scooped her in his arms when she was curled inward. She tossed in his arms, but he was able to throw her to the floor in the dark closet where she’d stay for days. He locked the door.

She shrieked against it. “But I _like_ it, Father! I like it so much! I like it…Please _please,_ Father, I like it!”

Annie shoved the rest of the hamburger in her mouth as soon as they were out of sight. It tasted so good, tantalizingly salty, different from the raw meat snatched from the butcher’s. But she knew what tasted best. What tasted right, what made her eyes roll back into her head, was Mikasa. Her tongue searched her mouth for a morsel of blood, of skin. She picked at her teeth with her fingers, sucking up anything she could.

Then, satisfied that she’d left nothing untasted, Annie held her hand high before her and closed it into a fist. She recognized that familiar flood of power, some hidden instinct boiling in her gut. She had to have more. She was unsure if it was gluttony, or lust. Whatever it was, it was absolutely terrifying.

She didn’t know what she was becoming.

She only knew she had to feed.

Alone under the tree, Annie began to laugh.


	2. awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one can tell.

Her own laughter was like nothing she’d ever heard before. The bellowing became hiccups, the hiccups sobs. Annie stood, swaying, her head ducked as she stared down at her feet. She didn’t feel dizzy. She didn’t feel weak or sick. It was a rush of power that flowed through her now.

 _Something’s wrong with you_ , she said in her mind. With that, a grin came to her face. The wrongness might be definable; the reason her dad hit her, ignored her, the reason he and everyone else hated her, could be from a disease.

It could be because she was a—

“No.”

No, not in a hundred years. They were gone, across the sea, in the swamps and the tundra. Annie was in the countryside, and the farmland was for people. People like her.

Annie glanced around at the empty yard. She looked down at her limbs. No blood this time. No evidence. Evidence, no, there was nothing to hide, nothing! Annie was a normal nine-year-old girl. A so-below-average kid that she didn’t even have any friends.

No one would tell on her. The way Reiner looked at her…The way Mikasa’s dark eyes bore into her…

Who would they tell?

Annie began to run.

Recess had ended, the last of the children entering the school. The teacher, the students, the secretary who would buzz her in, all of them would wonder, and Annie again looked down at herself, to convince herself that, no, she didn’t look different, not at all. Despite how she felt.

Energized. Alive. Awake.

It shouldn’t be a bad feeling, to feel good, but something insidious coiled in her belly like a snake.

Then the school bell chimed that class had begun, and Annie clutched at her ears. Its toll had hit her like a truck, and suddenly she noticed the sound of the cicadas, the birds. All closer. Too close. Everything heightened, no sound hidden from her. She walked across the school’s blacktop. To her left was the fence of the yard she’d just exited, and she startled when a rustling came from that direction.

It was only the orange tabby, having hopped onto the fencetop. Normally docile, it now hissed at her.

“Go away!” Annie snapped, tears springing to her eyes. All she wanted was for everyone, everything, around her to be normal. Still the cat hissed, jumped onto the blacktop, and slowly advanced on her.

Annie took a threatening step toward the cat, but it held its ground.

“Just leave me alone,” she said, but she stooped to hold the cat, wanting to assure herself that it was the same tabby that trusted her enough to sleep in her lap, to take treats from her hand.

The cat yowled in her grip, swiping at her arms. Annie ignored the pain. The instant she touched it, she heard a tiny, wild thumping in her ears. What the hell? She dropped the tabby, which fled in terror. She told herself it was nothing. Her imagination. She rubbed at the bloody scratches on her arm and walked faster and tried to think of an excuse for being so late.

The mysterious thumping had faded the second she dropped the cat.

The secretary had let her in, not giving the slightest interest in Annie’s tardiness. She slipped into the girls’ room and wiped at the thin scratches on her arms with a paper towel.

You’re normal. No one can say otherwise. No one can tell.

As Annie slipped into the classroom, Ms. Ral was just beginning to question where she was.

“Oh. There you—” Ms. Ral paused and frowned. “Excuse me,” she said to the class. She hustled up to Annie, saying, “Wait in the hall a moment,” in a hushed voice.

Confused, Annie complied and went out to lean against the hallway wall, suddenly exhausted. What had Ms. Ral seen when she walked in? The scratches weren’t that noticeable. Angry red streaks lined her forearms, but she’d hidden them behind her back when she went in. She pushed at the bangs hanging in her face and felt wetness on her cheeks. She’d been crying more? How had she not noticed? Annie wiped at her face, hands shaking.

Soon, another teacher showed up, went into the classroom, and Ms. Ral came out.

“Annie. What’s wrong?” She crouched in front of her.

“I don’t feel good,” Annie lied.

“Is it the other students again? I can call your father to—”

“No! I’m okay.”

She reminded herself that this was the best possible outcome: none of the other kids had told on her.

Ms. Ral sighed and pulled a tissue from her purse. Annie caught the strong scent of flowery perfume on her teacher, normally so faint. When Annie didn’t move, Ms. Ral reached with the tissue to wipe at Annie’s face.

“Annie!” she admonished. “It’ll be alright.”

Her hand brushed against Annie’s cheek.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

Annie paled. The wild beating she’d heard when holding the cat. The steady beating she could hear now.

Heartbeats.

When she went back into class, she saw Mikasa sitting at the desk behind hers. Annie walked past her without turning her head and sat to instantly feel the penetrating gaze on the nape of her neck. She almost couldn’t breathe, having caught Mikasa’s scent while she passed her. Why should that matter?

Why did she smell so good?

Mikasa gave off something earthy yet sweet, and it emanated off her constantly. Annie wanted so badly to turn around and stare, to get closer and inhale more. For now, she held her breath as much as possible.

Annie focused on her other surroundings, and it turned out she could sense everything: the scratching of pencils, the drumming of fingers on desks, the sound of her own ragged breathing and the smell of her own sweat.

Ms. Ral wrote a fractions problem on the board, the chalk-on-board sound grating Annie’s ears, when she picked up on a conversation behind her.

“Annie tried to eat Mikasa,” she heard Sasha say to Connie.

“I DID NOT!” Annie said, her chair screeching back so loud it stabbed her eardrums.

Sasha stared at her. The whole class stared at her.

“Annie,” Ms. Ral said. “What are you talking about?”

“Um…”

“You…heard me?” Sasha said. She was sitting in the back of the classroom. Four rows from where Annie sat. In terror, Annie realized that Sasha had been whispering.

Her eyes filled with tears again. She had to find a way to tell everyone she was normal. Or as “normal” as she was before recess happened.

“Nothing.” She sat back down and laid her head in her arms. Good: this suffocated away Mikasa’s stupid smell.

Today’s class was exactly like any other, she told herself. Just be a warm body. Exist. Until you can hide.

But already she was concocting a plan. She had to let Mikasa, Sasha, Reiner, Eren, and Hitch know that what happened in the garden was a weird fluke. She sat up and scribbled out a note, holding it behind her in her open palm. In a moment, Mikasa plucked it up.

“I’m sorry,” it said. And, “I’m weird today.”

Annie waited until a tap came on her shoulder. She reached up and the note fell in her palm.

“Every day,” it said back in a neat print. But then, “Do you wanna walk home with me?”

Annie bit her lip. She always knew Mikasa was a little strange, too somber, too dark. Yet the prospect of being with her excited as much as it terrified.

No. She couldn’t.

“Why would I do that?” Annie wrote at last.

The note took a long time to come back. This time, in someone else’s flowery cursive, it said, “Mikasa’s joking, idiot. Who would walk with a biter like you?”

Oh.

Annie glanced back. Hitch was sitting next to Mikasa, smirking. Mikasa stared gloomily at her desk.

Well, Annie had failed with those two. That left Reiner, who had probably told the whole story to Bert already. And Sasha. She tried her first, right at 3:05.

“Sasha?” she said, standing over her desk.

The brunette jumped in alarm. “What? What do you need?”

“I’m sorry I ate your burger…” Annie said, staring off at the window. Sasha was very into food. With how much she ate, it was a surprise that she wasn’t twice as chubby as she already was.

“Um…it’s okay. Cold fast food is icky.”

“…I liked it.”

“Ah. That’s…good.”

“Bye.”

“Weeeeird,” Connie whispered as she walked off.

Okay, that didn’t go so well either.

Bert and Reiner had already left the classroom. She snuck into the hall and was walking past the boys’ room when she heard their voices, slightly amplified with her weird new hearing. Running water told her they were washing their hands.

“But she’s not on the list,” Bert said urgently.

“I know. But she’s…different.”

“It’s impossible. Why would they make one and then just…leave it behind?”

“I don’t know, okay?”

“Should we do something?”

“No. Not yet. We just watch for now.”

The sinks turned off, paper towels were pulled, and hands dried. Annie walked away and turned a corner just as the door swung open. Were they talking about her? What was the list? Make one and leave it behind? What did they know?

She gave up on talking to those two. They were weird anyway. Reiner _seemed_ alright, but his mom, Ms. Braun, was always wearing black, ever since her husband died…eight years ago. A kid with a mom like that couldn’t be even halfway normal, and this was coming from Annie who had a father “like that.” And Reiner’s friend Bert, Bert was always watching the world like a cornered rabbit. He always got nervous talking to people, or at least to Annie, like he had something to hide.

She sprinted home. She wasn’t eager to see her father, but she had a fascination with her newfound strength. When she arrived on her doorstep, she was barely winded. A far cry from the little girl who couldn’t run from home base to first without wanting to die.

In spite of what this energy could portend, Annie smiled to herself. Meat. Meat was the answer for sure. She’d sneak it from now on. She’d find a way.

Her father was already sitting at the table, dinner set out. A bad sign. He valued promptness, but it was subjective: tonight he’d prepared dinner early enough that Annie was very late, no matter how fast she had run. He didn’t look up at her, using his foot to kick out her chair for her to sit.

Annie tiptoed to her seat and joined him.

“The lettuce is wilting,” he grumbled.

“I’m sorry, Father.”

He turned his hard, dark eyes on her. “Let us pray.”

She took his hand. His heartbeat was firm and slightly quick. Angry.

“Dear God,” her father said. “We thank you for this meal. The milk you’ve provided from the Springer’s ranch, the vegetables and wheat from the Ackerman’s farm…”

Annie tensed at the name, and something twisted in her stomach, but her father took no notice. Despite his anger, the prayer he delivered lasted only a minute, though when he let her hand go, they prayed in silence for over ten minutes.

Please, God, Annie thought. I am one of your creatures. I am not Job. I am not Lilith. I am made in your image. Please tell me so.

Finally, they ate. As Annie stuffed bread in her mouth, she tried something. “Father,” she said. “Have you always been a vegetarian?”

He eyed her suspiciously, set down his fork, made a show of wiping his mouth with his napkin. Finally, he said, “No, Annie. I lived a life of sin before meeting your mother.”

Annie’s eyes widened. She could count on one hand the times he’d spoken of her mother. And sin? She couldn’t speak.

He furrowed his brow more, knowing what she was thinking. “She was a wicked woman. Seeing her so fast on the path to Hell opened my eyes.”

“Opened your eyes?”

“She showed me just where I was going.”

Annie nodded. “Okay. But why is meat a bad thing?”

His fist came down on the table. “God created man, the animals, everything. Eating his creation…”

“But he created this lettuce!” she exclaimed.

His eyes grew big, and his mouth curled in a snarl. Annie swallowed and gripped her napkin in her lap. This was bad.

“Do you dare question Him?”

“No, Father. I’m sorry. I was only curious.”

“If you’re moving your mouth with such questions, you’re too busy to eat, aren’t you?”

He grabbed up their plates with a clatter, scraped the food into the trash. The punishment didn’t impact her as he intended: Annie wasn’t hungry.

In the evenings, her father often fell asleep in his armchair in the living room. Today was no exception. He snored gently, the sound especially loud to Annie’s ears today. Why were her senses so clear? At the same time, the sensitivity was almost becoming…normal.

In search of answers, she crept into her father’s bedroom. In the corner. Between the bed and the wall. The collapsed floorboard she’d found years ago. She lifted it with a creak, freezing at the noise, but her father did not stir in the other room.

Five old, forbidden books. She pulled out the one on top. “The Beasts of Marley.” A dark purple book with thin, Bible-like pages. She opened it, scanned the table of contents.

Appearance.

Hunting Practices.

Sensory and Strength Abnormalities

There. Page 52.

“Enhanced ability to perceive scents, sights, and especially sounds. A vampire can sense the heartbeats of others through the ground, up to twenty feet away.”

Annie sighed in relief. She couldn’t do that. She had to touch someone. And who knows? Maybe having a balanced diet like she’d had today improved hearing. Maybe the heartbeat thing was normal, so normal that no one even brought it up, like the floaters in her eyes she always thought were special until she learned about them last year. She closed the book and replaced the floorboard. She was normal. She was a person.

The next day. She heard the usual students snickering around her, but otherwise they left her alone. She felt okay, still full enough that she wasn’t starving.

Mikasa sat far away enough that Annie could barely catch her scent.

After their English lesson Ms. Ral checked her watch. “It’s a gym day, isn’t it?”

Annie swallowed. Being thrown back outside to play kickball with everyone. It was less than appealing.

With a scrape of chair legs against linoleum that Annie would have to get used to, they got up and filed out of the room.

The sun was blaring, the heat magnified by the blacktop they gathered on. The sun felt worse today, and Annie squinted as Sasha pitched the dull red kickball to her. Annie’s aim was a little off, but the ball went flying. Fast and far, more than Annie had ever managed in her short life. Thanks to her aim, it wasn’t a homerun, but it hit the top of the fence and let Annie run all the way around to second base.

She could hear the elation of her teammates, the rude grumbling of the other team, disturbed and put off by the weakling’s sudden success.

“She cheated,” Eren said to Armin, both way in the outfield.

Mikasa was with them, and the close-knit trio went after the ball together. “That’s impossible,” Mikasa said. “It’s _kick_ ball.”

“But it’s _Annie,_ ” Eren countered.

“Yeah…” Armin said, pausing to stare at Annie.

Normally Annie would have agreed. But she wasn’t Annie anymore. She was someone else, and as good as that kick had been, she didn’t like who she might become.

Mikasa didn’t throw the ball back, just stood there holding it. Even from here Annie could see the problem. The ball was deflated.

Mikasa delivered it to Ms. Ral as the other kids whispered around her.

“Still impossible, Bert?” Reiner said.

Bert elbowed him and glanced at Annie. “Shut up. She can…”

“Shit…”

“Oh,” Ms. Ral said. “Good job?”

When they found a new ball and the teams swapped, Mikasa was up to bat, aiming an expert kick that sailed over everyone’s heads with a flat thwack. It was efficient, effective, and as it tipped over the fence of the yard they’d had their encounter in the day before, Mikasa walked the bases.

“Mikasa, you don’t have to go around all the bases, but could you please get the ball for us?” Ms. Ral asked.

“But I won,” Mikasa said blankly, tilting her head. “I have to finish winning.”

Ms. Ral screwed up her mouth. “Please, Mikasa. Finish up and then go get it.”

“I think Annie should get it. She left some of her stuff over there yesterday.”

Annie held her breath. It was true. She’d left her book behind, and Mikasa had noticed when she reentered the classroom without it.

“Mikasa…” Ms. Ral said, at a loss.

“I know! We’ll both go,” Mikasa said. She jogged to first base, where Annie stood, and took her by the hand. Annie felt her pulse like a burst of electricity as Mikasa pulled her away.

Annie trailed after Mikasa, her willpower oscillating between pulling away and catching up. Whatever this fragrance coming off Mikasa was, it was stronger with her sweat, and that’s what all but forced Annie to follow.

When they entered the garden, Mikasa let her go and plucked the kickball from a bush. Annie went and grabbed her book from under the tree, clutching it to her chest.

“Annie,” Mikasa said. “You’re off.”

Annie backed up a pace. “So? Why are you doing this? Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“I wanna know. How did you run home like that yesterday? How did you do that today? That kick.”

“I dunno. It’s been a…good week?” Annie said with a wince. A week where she got force-fed, a week where she bit her classmate and didn’t let go (and didn’t want to), could hardly be considered good.

Mikasa abandoned the ball in favor of slowly peeling the bandage from her hand. Annie saw the indent of her own bloody toothmarks, nearly completing a ring around the pale flesh of Mikasa’s index finger. That earthy, sweet aroma carried itself to Annie’s nose, settled into her lungs, and flowed through her body. Mikasa held her injured hand out to her and stepped closer.

“Annie,” she said. [“Would you like some more?”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20144629)


	3. why don't you run from me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> feeding

Annie clamped her mouth shut and shook her head. She walked backward, stumbling as her feet tangled with the roots of the tree. She fell back on her butt.

Mikasa walked to stand over Annie, hand still raised in offering.

“Can you smell it?” she said

Annie clasped her hands over her face. She could. She could smell Mikasa, her blood, everything. She could nearly taste it, but she wasn’t at the point where she could admit it. How damn much she _wanted_ it.

“Leave me the hell alone,” Annie whispered.

Mikasa’s eyes dulled. “Coward. Still.”

Their gazes stayed locked. She wanted then to destroy Mikasa. Mikasa, the only other person who knew of her little secret. Perhaps, at this point, better than Annie did herself.

“I hate you,” Annie spat out. “I wish everyone would just leave me alone.”

“I can’t,” Mikasa said. “Not now. You’re…”—here Mikasa’s lips twisted into a slight smile—“…dangerous.”

“I’m…I don’t know what you mean!”

Mikasa took her wounded index finger and placed it to Annie’s lips, like she was shushing her. “You like this, right?”

Annie inhaled sharply despite her best efforts, but then wrenched her face away and sprang to her feet. “No! You’re a creep, Mikasa!”

Mikasa sighed and gazed wistfully at the tall fence that blocked their view of the blacktop. “My dad says this is why I only have two friends. Eren and Armin are…I collect weird people. And now I found you.”

Annie’s eyes darted around. “I don’t wanna be friends with you.”

“Too bad. I’m the only person who’d wanna be yours, Annie.”

“Shut up! I’ll…I’ll kill you, bitch!”

Mikasa raised an eyebrow and went to recover the kickball, twirling it in her hands as she looked toward the school. “Maybe you will. But right now, we should head back.”

“I’m not doing shit with you, Mikasa!” She shoved her to the ground and ran away without a second glance.

Dinner was the usual stolid affair, and Annie pushed the potatoes and spinach around her plate, a hunger stretching inside her. It had been over 24 hours since the hamburger, since sucking down those precious drops of Mikasa’s blood. The old, weak Annie yawned inside of her, ready to wake back up and come out.

“Eat, Annie,” her father said. A quiet command, but she found him much more terrifying when his voice was lowered.

She took a big fork of potato and chewed it laboriously. So bland. So boring. The few spices her father had added did nothing for her. As she swallowed and wiped the tasteless crumbs from her mouth with the back of her hand, she ventured a question she’d been too scared to ask for all her life. Maybe she was emboldened by her newfound strength. Or drunk on it.

“Father,” she said, “what was mother like?”

The change in her father was instantaneous. He stopped chewing, swallowed, set his fork down. Gently.

“Why would you ask me that? You know everything.”

“I wanna know what she was like. Did she look like me?”

His mouth twitched. “She looked _exactly_ …like you.”

Annie gave a tiny nod. From what she’d heard of her mother, she was immoral, and that immorality was somehow a direct cause of her death. The story she’d made up for herself was drunk driving, sometimes drug use, or she kissed a man she shouldn’t have kissed and her father murdered her.

Sometimes, the story was simply childbirth.

“Sorry, Father,” Annie muttered. She put her head down, closed her eyes, and pretended to pray. She felt his eyes on her the whole time.

“Go to your room. Stay there,” he said finally.

Annie stood and went to her tiny bedroom, bare except for its bed, its desk, and a large, full bookshelf. Her cat, Lily, a fat yet elegant Persian with long ghostly hair that coated the house, yawned on the bed. She didn’t seem so scared of Annie today. Maybe a little wary, but she rolled to let Annie pet her belly.

“Lily Cat,” Annie hummed. She’d given it that name as a very small child but took off the “Cat” as she grew older. Lily purred now.

“Good baby,” Annie said. “Good little girl.”

Then Lily grabbed Annie’s hand with her two front paws, opening wide to chomp down.

“Ouch!” Annie said, pulling away.

The slightest jewel of blood came out on the back of her hand. Annie stared for a moment, entranced, before putting it to her mouth. She sucked at it, and the taste was metallic, dull. She sighed. It seemed her own blood did nothing for her.

Lily had sprung from the bed and hid below, mewling pitifully.

Annie was forbidden from playing in the woods behind her house. But she knew they’d lead her directly to the Ackerman’s fields. She’d gone there countless times, stealing corn, turnips, even raw wheat in the hopes of finding something that could fill her. Once she’d even snuck into the small grove of apple trees up against Mikasa’s house. She couldn’t help herself then, spying into the Ackerman’s kitchen. Mrs. Ackerman stood at the sink with her back to the window. Mr. Ackerman came up behind and hugged her, and she fell into laughter. Annie didn’t see Mikasa.

She would stay in the woods now, but it felt right to be just that little bit closer to Mikasa, somehow.

The sun was setting, and the woods were inundated with golden light, little particles of dust floating in its rays.

A squirrel skittered in a tree above her. The tree was bare-limbed, and as Annie pulled down on one of its low branches, she realized it was dying, its brittleness and lack of leaves a symptom of some fungus deep inside. The squirrel went higher. Suddenly, Annie wanted to climb.

She yanked at the limb. It was weak, but she was small, certain it would hold. Annie lifted herself easily, her newfound strength buoyed by the task at hand. For a moment as she scaled the tree, she was happy.

The squirrel chittered at her from several branches up. Its beady eyes bore into her, and she could tell it was considering leaping to a far branch, running down the trunk and far, far away.

Annie tensed her whole body. She was directly beneath it, less than a few feet separating them. The branch it was on was thin, but she leapt to grab it, striking at the squirrel with her other hand. Predictably, the narrow branch snapped. She fell with the squirrel, landing on her feet while the animal laid stunned and supine. She grabbed it.

A screaming, terrified heartbeat, one aware of its own imminent end.

Annie squeezed the squirrel’s body. It had felt so elating, to hunt. To capture. She grabbed its neck and twisted. Its heart gave a last, desperate pump, then stopped.

She held its long body in both palms, in awe. Without another thought she plunged her mouth into its middle. But something was happening to her mouth. Her jaw made a popping sound, then a groaning. A raspy hissing escaped her throat as she felt her mouth stretch, opening wider than humanly possible. Pain lit up behind her back molars but still she chomped into the squirrel, tearing it to shreds.

After slobbering over her kill and picking its bones clean, she dropped the skeleton and felt around in her mouth. Her jaw had dilated like a snake’s. What was more, new teeth had grown behind her molars. Sharp ones that pricked at her fingertips.

“Nooo,” she moaned into the empty air. Annie knew her jaw had done something she’d only read in her father’s books, something she hadn’t believed was possible. Until now.

She washed her face in the creek. Running her tongue in her mouth, she felt that those teeth had receded, and her mouth was the right size. Normal. The pain of cutting those teeth was dulling, the wounds already healing. There could be no doubt. She was one of _them._ Extreme physical strength, improved senses, a desire for blood and flesh. But if all this were true, why was she here, in the human domain?

It spat in the face of her father’s mysterious books. If Annie was a…a _vampire_ , she shouldn’t be alive. They needed blood and meat. Constantly. They had massive aversions to vegetables, fruits, grains, even sugar.

Whatever she was, she no doubt had a taste for flesh. Last year, when she ate the meat from the butcher’s, her father kept her locked in the closet for a week, and any craving had faded. And this time…it wasn’t the hamburger she’d choked down, but Mikasa’s blood that had stirred something primal in her. Whatever it was, it would not fade.

But Annie couldn’t eat people. Her father called it cannibalism, always with a horrendous snarl on his face, with condemnation. He’d tried to instill a hatred for vampires in her, but what had come to her was a deep-seated fear. For vampires that she’d never seen, never would see.

Annie splashed more water on her face.

“Monster. Devil,” she muttered through her tears. “Abomination.”

The next day, Annie sulked at her desk, not absorbing a word from Ms. Ral.

“And another theme of _Touching Spirit Bear_?” she asked the class. When no one answered, dazed by the heat entering through the open windows with the death of the AC that day, she started calling on kids. Connie didn’t know, and Sasha clearly hadn’t read a single page.

“Annie?” Ms. Ral said.

Violence, Annie thought, her stomach turning. Mauling. Death.

When Annie didn’t answer, instead sighing and staring at the top of her desk, Ms. Ral said, “Annie? Are you there?”

The class laughed. Annie glanced over, incurious, and caught Mikasa’s gaze from the seat next to her (why they were suddenly neighbors wasn’t hard to guess). Mikasa cocked her head, waiting with everyone else. Annie had to hold her breath if she wanted any respite from Mikasa’s scent.

“No,” Annie said, in answer to Ms. Ral’s question.

(No, I’m not here.)

Ms. Ral recovered quickly, prompting someone else to answer her question. Soon, it was gym time, where Annie held back in their game of tag. She made sure she was caught, that she struggled at being “it” for some time before finally passing on the “it-ness” to someone else. If only it were that easy, to wipe your otherness onto somebody else’s shirt.

On her way home, Annie caught a rabbit. Beneath her pride at the successful capture were the guilt and terror over what she had to do next. She kept it alive for most of her walk home, staring into its horrified eyes, one hand around its neck, the other supporting its back. She studied its fur: brown, gray, with tufts of white. Inside were delicate pinks and rich, delicious reds. She tried to soothe it, but its heart hammered nonstop, its legs kicking and back arching in spastic, futile motions. Before her house was in sight, Annie apologized to the rabbit and broke its neck. She stuffed it into her backpack with plans to eat it after the dinner her father would give her.

Dinner. A big salad. Nothing else. She eyed her father, wondering if he knew something about her that she didn’t. If he knew she needed meat…She froze with a forkful held to her mouth. That was it. All the talk about the sin of eating animals was bullshit. Her father was keeping her weak. So he could hurt her. Keep her under his control.

Annie pondered running away. Forever. She’d tried it once. Walked about ten miles a few years ago, her Hello Kitty backpack stuffed with food, coins, and toilet paper. When the sheriff pulled up next to her, she dropped the backpack and bolted. He waded into the tall grass she’d hidden in and made quick work of catching her.

“Now, now,” he’d said, a meaty hand laid on her neck as he steered her to the patrol car. “Let’s get you home, kid.”

He’d let her sit in the front passenger seat, so she didn’t feel like a criminal.

“Your father is very worried,” he said as they neared her house.

“Mm,” Annie said with a nod. Her father would beat the shit out of her, she knew.

After dinner tonight, Annie thanked him profusely for the meal. He often liked it when she was grateful, desperate. She kissed him on the cheek and picked up her backpack, dead bunny inside, and headed to her room.

The very last day of school was just like the very first: Annie was starving. It seemed that all forest creatures, birds, rabbits, squirrels, even the foxes and coyotes, had gotten wind of her. What was more, Annie seemed to grow weaker. All these animals were so stringy. Thin. And the time it took to finally catch one didn’t seem worth all the effort.

“…And we’ll go around and say our plans for summer vacation,” Ms. Ral said, seeming just as happy as everyone else about the break.

Annie needed a plan.

“I’m traveling,” Reiner said.

She couldn’t find any more food in the woods.

“Spending time with friends,” Mikasa said, looking over at Annie, who scowled back. Mikasa had made a point of sitting next to Annie: Every. Stupid. Day. She even tried to partner up with Annie on every class project (and Annie had made a point of rejecting her each time).

Annie’s stomach grumbled. What would she do? Steal? No, stealing from a butcher’s again could go even worse if the butcher caught her, and then the sheriff would be called and her father. No. No. No. Annie shook her head right there in the middle of class.

“I’ll be milking cows,” Connie said with a groan, inciting laughter from everyone else.

Annie’s eyes lit up. She was surrounded by farmland. Unguarded animals caged and waiting.

“Trying new foods,” she said, almost to herself.

In the dead of night, Annie found that her vision had improved as well. She slipped out of bed at about one AM. Not that she’d slept. Annie didn’t feel tired and had spent the night with her ear pressed to the wall, listening to her father’s movements, almost certain that his breathing was steadying.

She opened her window and hopped out. The woods were fifty yards beyond. Annie walked fast, glancing back often, in terror of seeing her father’s light flicker on.

It was a quarter mile through the woods, then into the Ackerman’s fields, and past their house to the barn behind it.

Annie passed through wheat and corn, stilling when she saw the buttery light pouring from the Ackerman’s porch light. Luckily, they didn’t have a dog.

Annie searched around for a chicken coop. It would probably be near the barn, but circling again and again, she found nothing. As a last resort, she tried the barn itself.

The rusty hinges of the barn door complained horribly, but she slipped inside, pressing her ear to a crack to listen for noises from the house. All clear.

And there were the chickens, chortling in a small enclosure. Annie glanced around, eyes going to the rafters above. Empty.

She snuck past the Ackerman’s horse, a dirt brown mare dozing lazily. She’d love to taste its flesh, but she’d have to steal it first, then eat as much as she could before getting full, and finally dispose of the huge corpse. Not gonna happen. She stroked its mane and felt its booming heartbeat. It roused slightly at her touch only to close its eyes and nod off again.

The chickens fluttered their wings and settled as she approached, about two dozen of them in the small, fenced area. Dusty, white hens with fat bodies and small, dumb eyes. She didn’t have to feel bad about this. Lightning quick, Annie reached over the mesh and snatched one by the neck, causing a ruckus to the other chickens. However, she’d squeezed the captured one’s throat so hard that its esophagus was crushed.

With her kill in hand, Annie waited in the shadow of the barn door until the remaining chickens quieted. She’d risked leaving the giant door ajar rather than having to creak it open again. She slipped out. All that was left was to shut it and run. She did so slowly, not wanting to rip the whole bandaid off in one loud, painful go.

Annie sprinted through the fields and at last reached the woods. She reached the thick of it and climbed a tree. Pulling off feathers in great handfuls, they cascaded to the ground like snow. Annie grew restless, hungrier by the second. It didn’t matter if she got feathers in her mouth. Her stomach launched into a final, angry growl, and she bit into the chicken’s breast with a moaning laugh.

Pangs of guilt constricted her chest, especially when she picked the last thin straggles of meat off the chicken’s thin, pathetic bones. It had been an easy kill. Too easy.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered. She meant it. God, she’d even wanted to kill that sweet horse. Annie sighed and, sated at last, slipped out of the tree, landing in a heap of feathers and blood. She dug with her hands into the dirt. A shallow grave for a poor victim. Annie washed off her shoes in the creek and headed home.

She stole a second chicken a week later before realizing it was too obvious to steal like clockwork. If only she could just steal some eggs! But she had no way of cooking them. Weirdly, she could eat raw meat but drew the line at the risk of salmonella poisoning.

So when the summer set in full force, heat hazy and swimming, she waited as long as she could, spending time in the woods lurking after the increasingly elusive wild animals. At last, she hunted in the barn a third time. It was becoming easy. The rusty door didn’t scare her. Everyone slept.

She grew too bold. She was famished now, and she’d been so good in starving herself. Moonlight shone in through a break in the ceiling, and Annie knelt with her sacrifice, a particularly fat hen. She snapped its neck like a practiced killer and took a big, juicy bite that made her slobber and giggle helplessly.

Then, rustling.

Above, Annie thought, snapping her blood-drenched face to the rafters. A small figure sat, swinging its legs on a beam.

“Nice of you to show up,” Mikasa Ackerman said with a yawn.[ "I’ve been waiting.”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20328073)


	4. teeth in the grass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> training

Annie held herself back from hissing, her gut instinct urging her to attack like a cat.

Mikasa stood up on the rafter and stretched before walking across to a small platform with a ladder.

“What are you doing here?” Annie said as she watched her descend. The chicken’s corpse fell from her hands to the dirty, hay-strewn floor.

“I’m here protecting my chickens,” Mikasa said, matter of fact.

“You let me kill that one,” she countered.

Mikasa blinked at the small body of the bird in front of her. “Yes. I had to be sure.”

Annie backed away a step. “I could do it easy. I really could kill you.”

“Yes, Annie. Because you’re a vampire.”

“Stop it. I…I eat other stuff.”

“Squirrels? Rats?”

“No! Salads. Fruit. Vampires don’t do that. They can’t.”

“What makes you so special?”

“I don’t know, okay?!”

“You’re dangerous,” Mikasa said. She stepped closer. That’s when Annie saw a long, thin object in her hand.

“What are you doing?”

Mikasa held it up to the moonlight. “This is a wooden stake. I made it really sharp, and if it goes through your heart, you die. That’s what they all say.”

Annie’s lip quivered. “I don’t eat people,” she said in a fervent whisper.

“That’s good. But you tried to suck my finger dry. What was that about?”

“Yours is the only…human blood I’ve tried.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

Annie stared at her.

“I told you,” Mikasa said. “You’re dangerous. I don’t want you hurting my friends.”

Annie shook her head. “I won’t!”

“If you really need to drink blood that bad…” Mikasa held the sharp point of the stake to her own arm.

“STOP!” Annie yelled. “Don’t _do_ that.”

“Why not?” Mikasa said, looking truly confused. “You’re hungry.”

“What’s it to you?”

“I told you before,” Mikasa said. “I want to help you, Annie.”

“No. No way. I’m not hurting you again.”

“Alright.” Mikasa stuffed the stake into the messenger bag hanging at her side. “But there’s meat in my house. You can come by and eat with us. If you want.”

“…Meat?”

Mikasa nodded gently, a tiny smile drifting onto her face as she reached into her bag again. She pulled out a white cloth and unwrapped it. The smell of bacon assaulted Annie’s nose.

“Can I…”

“Finish Plucky first,” Mikasa said, pointing at the chicken.

“Oh, uh…” There seemed no worse fate than doing…that…in front of Mikasa. “No,” Annie said.

“Come on. I wanna watch.”

“You…what?”

“I wanna see how you eat, Annie.”

Annie stared at her, trying to figure out the joke, but Mikasa was so severe, her eyes intent on Annie’s mouth.

“It’s gross,” Annie said. “I don’t want you looking at me like that.”

“Then I’ll tell my parents you’ve been stealing our hens. And then I’ll tell them why.”

Annie glared at the bird at her feet.

“Okay. Fine.”

She knelt again, and Mikasa knelt with her, expectant.

Annie took in a shuddering breath and plunged her face to the hen. It always took a moment, a couple bites, for her jaw to dislocate and her teeth to protract. She buried her face in the hen, but Mikasa still gasped and leaned in.

“Your mouth…”

Annie wanted to cry, but eating tended to frenzy her, and she got absorbed in it for the next few minutes. When she dropped the carcass to the ground, she saw Mikasa’s wide-eyed stare. But there was no fear there. Was it…admiration?

“That was…really cool,” Mikasa deadpanned.

Annie covered her mouth, still drenched and disfigured from her feeding.

Mikasa moved her hands to Annie’s, gently taking hold of her wrists.

“Lemme see.”

Cautiously, Annie allowed her hands to be lowered, and Mikasa cupped Annie’s cheeks, tilting her head around as she peered inside. Then her fingers prodded at her open mouth, even reaching in to touch the sharp teeth back by her molars.

The scent of Mikasa’s hands, the grace of her cool flesh, and the hint of sweat against Annie’s tongue…

Annie began to slobber.

“Ew!” Mikasa wrenched her hand back, wiping it against her pants. “You drooled on me.”

Annie covered her mouth again. “Sorry.” Her extra teeth began to retract, her jaw resettling to something human. “You got some chicken blood on your clothes.”

“Ah,” Mikasa said, as if she couldn’t care less about the stains on her shirt. “Are you still hungry?”

“No. You’re just…”

Annie shuddered at her next thought: dessert.

Mikasa was completely unaware of the danger she was in. All those weeks before summertime, Annie could smell her in class, that one scent so distinct, so enticing. Annie had to get away. But Mikasa was so…different.

Mikasa stood and dusted the dirt off her knees. “Do you still want the bacon? Or did Plucky make you full?”

“Plucky was my favorite, actually,” Mikasa said as soon as they entered the woods, a shovel slung over her shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

Mikasa glanced back at Annie. “No. It shows you have good taste. But nothing matters, honestly. A bird is just a bird, and death is only death. I’m just glad you got to eat. You were always so measly, Annie. But I think you’re actually gaining weight now. You look better.”

“I feel better.”

“…Good. Here’s fine,” Mikasa said, stopping below a tall poplar tree. She handed Annie the shovel and gently took the carcass.

“Why do I have to do it?”

“You stole my hens. Besides…” –Annie’s night vision revealed Mikasa’s eyes looking her up and down—“You have super strength now, right?”

“Uh…Sure.” Annie planted the shovel into the ground, the dry dirt parting for her. Within minutes, they had a suitable grave for Plucky. Mikasa reverently lowered its remains into the hole, and Annie shrouded it with dirt.

“Dear God,” Mikasa said softly, “please bear Plucky up to heaven. Amen.”

“A…amen.” The prayer had taken Annie by surprise. She forgot that other families might be religious in a non-crazy way.

“We should start training right away,” Mikasa said.

“Training?”

“Your powers! You gotta get strong and fast so you can hunt.”

“I have been…Squirrels, rabbits. They’re scared of me. You should be scared too.”

Mikasa pulled her into a hug, Annie nearly melting into her scent.

“You’re stupid,” Mikasa said. “I have no reason to be scared of you. I know you’d never hurt me.”

Annie just stood there, arms limp at her sides. She’d hurt Mikasa countless times. She’d bit her finger. She’d shoved her to the ground. She’d called her a freak and worse. But when was the last time Annie had been hugged like this? Tears collected in her eyes as she tried in vain to remember.

“Okay.” Mikasa pulled back. “ We start training after we get a good sleep. And breakfast at my house.”

“Breakfast?” Annie said, hope creeping into her voice.

“Bacon and eggs. You’re gonna _love_ it!” Mikasa exclaimed, a huge grin spreading on her face.

“Okay!”

They parted ways at Plucky’s grave, and Annie went to bed, hardly sleeping a wink.

Despite her father’s insistence that she avoid the woods, she was free to roam elsewhere, and he rarely questioned where she’d been. So she headed down the road that morning, taking her to the library where she very quickly rented a book as an alibi. Then Annie ran, a big smile on her face, the wind pushing her hair back.

Breakfast. Breakfast with Mikasa Ackerman.

When Annie arrived at Mikasa’s front door, she fussed with her hair for a solid minute. She looked down at her grey hoodie and questioned if she should have worn something nice. Too late now. Despite the feast she’d had last night, Annie’s appetite was returning.

Annie knocked on the door, shifting on her feet.

“Is that your little friend?” a woman’s voice said from deep inside.

“Uh-huh! I’ll get it!” Annie heard Mikasa call, followed by bare feet slapping across the house. With a metallic turn, Mikasa creaked open the door.

“We’re having pancakes too,” she informed Annie in lieu of greeting.

“Oh. Okay?” Annie said in confusion. Despite her eager sprint to the door, Mikasa was grave and somber the moment she laid eyes on her. Annie’s skin crawled, not entirely unpleasantly—the sudden scent of Mikasa hit her like a wave.

“What?” Mikasa said flatly. “Don’t you still like people food?”

“I…I’m people!” Annie said defensively.

A small smile came to Mikasa’s face. “We add chocolate chips. Is that okay?”

“Yeah.”

They walked through the living room to the kitchen. Mrs. Ackerman was just getting the frying pan out. The tall, slim woman straightened from the cabinet and brushed back a strand of lovely black hair, just like Mikasa’s.

“Annie?” She smiled with a warmth that made Annie blush.

“Um. Yeah. I mean…nice to meet you, Mrs. Ackerman.”

You are NOTHING like your weirdo daughter, Annie didn’t say aloud.

Mrs. Ackerman laughed lightly behind her hand, a pleasant, sunny sound. “Please, have a seat.”

Annie and Mikasa sat just as a man came down the hallway into the kitchen.

“Is this the new friend? I thought Mikasa would be hung up on Eren and Armin forever!”

“I can make other friends,” Mikasa said with a sulk.

“Of course you can, my little changeling,” her father said, mussing her hair with his palm. Mikasa glowered at him, a dark heat radiating from her glare.

Mr. Ackerman was a big man. Light brown hair, warm hazel eyes. He looked like the type of dad Annie only saw on black and white tv shows. Kind, fair, wholesome. In other words, not the father from the Addams Family that she’d half-expected.

“It’s a shame she takes after Levi and not you!” Mrs. Ackerman said with a chuckle. Her slender arms stirred a pancake batter in a large, cheery yellow mixing bowl.

“I’m not like him at all!” Mikasa exclaimed. “Am I?”

Annie tilted her head.

“My brother,” Mr. Ackerman explained. “He’s all doom and gloom, just like his niece.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Nuh-uh!” Mikasa said.

Her father was about to offer a playful retort, when Annie’s stomach groaned rudely.

“I’m hurrying!” Mrs. Ackerman said as she lit the stove, and the Ackermans all laughed.

The eggs were gathered in a basket. The bacon was in a plastic package.

“No fresh bacon,” Mrs. Ackerman tutted. “Someone’s afraid to keep pigs.”

“Afraid?” Annie said.

“That’s me,” Mr. Ackerman said with an apologetic frown. “Pigs are known to eat small children.”

“Oh,” Annie said softly.

“Hush,” Mrs. Ackerman said. She laid the bacon strips into the crackling pan. “I’d be more concerned about what’s eating our hens in the night…”

Mikasa gave Annie a knowing look from across the table. Annie’s face flushed further. Her horrible crimes—coupled with the overwhelming scent of sizzling meat—shot a pulse of dizziness into Annie’s head.

Mr. Ackerman grumbled something about getting a proper hound to guard the place, leading his wife to remind him of her dog allergies.

“Allergic! You just don’t want to walk the thing.”

“Hmmm true,” Mrs. Ackerman sighed. “How many eggs do you want, Miss Annie?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had eggs before.”

“What?” Mrs. Ackerman said, spatula poised in midair. “How does that happen?”

“My father…”

“Doesn’t like eggs!” Mikasa finished.

Mikasa’s parents stared.

“He’s weird like that,” Annie explained. “I’ll have…two of them? Two eggs.”

“Okay!” Mrs. Ackerman sang, moving to crack an egg over the pan. “Bacon’s almost ready. I’ll pour the pancake batter, just give me a minute. Plates, dear.”

Mr. Ackerman got up and found four plates in the cabinet, not missing his opportunity to kiss his wife on the cheek and hug her from the side. It sent a weird chill up Annie’s spine. So this was a family…

The smell of meat, of eggs, filled Annie’s mouth with saliva. That coupled with the scent of Mikasa made Annie acutely uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to sink her teeth into, but she was suddenly starving. Mikasa tilted her head as she watched Annie squirm.

When Mr. Ackerman set the plate in front of her, Annie picked up her fork and stared down at the feast, holding herself back so she wouldn’t appear too ravenous.

“Dig in,” Mrs. Ackerman said after she poured batter into the skillet.

Annie cut tentatively into an egg, its yolk bleeding a bright yellow onto the white plate. She lifted a piece on her fork and stuffed it into her mouth.

“Mm!” The salt and pepper flavors, the wet consistency of the yolk and the softness of the egg white all mixed in Annie’s mouth. A balanced diet, a loving family…

Mrs. Ackerman looked back at her. “Are they that BAD?” she exclaimed.

“No. They’re not. They’re not bad at all,” Annie said as tears fell down her face.

Mrs. Ackerman nodded and lifted her hand, but Annie was already shoveling more food into her mouth.

Annie followed Mikasa into the cornfields, asking again what “training” meant.

Mikasa just skimmed her hand against the corn stalks in her path, her fingers eliciting a quiet shushing of leaves. They were in a narrow pathway of grass, tamped down by countless feet, wide enough to walk side by side, though Annie trailed behind.

“This is sweet corn,” Mikasa said. “We’ll be able to eat it soon.”

The corn in question was almost over Mikasa’s head, the thick stems seeming to defy gravity as they reached up and swayed in the breeze, the yellow cobs sheltered inside cocoons of green. Annie felt crowded and spied on by these hundreds of reedy sentinels, who listened vigilantly for the threat of pecking crows.

“Sweet corn,” Annie murmured, warmed by the thought of a whole summer of eating it with Mikasa, slathering it in salt and butter…going to her first barbecue, hamburger smoking on a grill. “Okay…”

Mikasa halted, and Annie almost stumbled into her.

“Alright,” Mikasa said. “We’re gonna do strength training first.”

She pulled a small journal from her backpack, along with a chunky stopwatch that looked like it belonged in the eighties.

“Do pushups until you can’t anymore,” Mikasa explained. “I’ll keep a tally and time it too.”

“I didn’t do that many on the gym tests.”

“That was before.”

Annie nodded. She was a little afraid of just how much stronger she was. It seemed so…impossible. Inhuman. But she got down into a plank position, waiting for Mikasa to click her stopwatch.

“’Kay,” Mikasa said.

Annie lowered herself, easily dipping deeper than she ever had before.

One.

She came back up. It had felt like nothing.

Two.

Still good.

Three.

By pushup number fifty, she started to feel a delicious strain in her biceps and chest. Still, she couldn’t say she was exactly tired…

…Ninety-eight.

Okay. Now her muscles were trembling, and she was pushing herself only so she could prove something to herself.

You are a different person. A better person.

A person.

Because people worked hard to get this strong, so Annie would have to work even harder, get even stronger than strong. To be different. Better. Somebody else.

When the pain burned enough that Annie lost count, when she was moving up and down torturously slowly, when she finally collapsed, her whole face into the grass, Mikasa clicked her stopwatch and spoke up, voice as emotionless as usual:

“One thirty three. In three minutes and nine seconds.”

Annie caught her breath. “That’s all?”

It had been a joke, but Mikasa’s brow creased as she said, “You’ll do better next time.”

After Annie recovered, Mikasa stood and dusted off her pants.

“Okay. We run from here to the woods.”

“Both of us?”

“Yes. And you’re gonna beat me.”

Annie swallowed. Could she really beat Mikasa? She was the fastest girl in class, faster than most of the boys, faster than the old Annie by far.

“Ready?”

Annie nodded, heart thrumming. Mikasa got into a classic runner’s position, the kind on the Olympics. Annie copied her.

“Set!” Mikasa said.

Annie scowled in concentration.

“Go!”

Mikasa took off, Annie lagging slightly, the sound of their feet swiping through the flattened grass. Then, almost imperceptibly, Annie gained ground. Neck and neck with Mikasa, her legs felt light, and she knew she could do more.

Easily.

She pushed it harder, going into a sprint that—when Annie turned around to grin back—left Mikasa a good ten yards back. Mikasa slowed, smiling as she watched Annie keep going.

“To the woods!” Mikasa shouted after her.

A hundred yards. Annie planted her left foot hard and took a leap, wondering how far she could jump. Suddenly, the ground seemed to streak by beneath her. She looked down, confused at the rush of grass, the loss of the corn stalks beside her giving way to open ground.

Then, pain. Everywhere. Her face and her whole front blazed with it, and Annie fell onto her back in shock. What the…?

Looming in front of her was a wall of bark. A tree? She’d crashed headlong into its trunk? How? In a daze she stood and turned to see a tiny Mikasa running at her through the cornfield, shouting something.

“I’m…at the woods?” Annie said, wiping blood from her nose. So, she’d run, or jumped. _Really_ fast. Her stomach lurched. Whatever she’d done, that speed was too much for her, and Annie covered her mouth, fighting the urge to puke.

When Mikasa finally caught up, she caught the rest of what she’d been saying, “You flickered, Annie! You were back there, and then you were here! You must have gone ten thousand feet in a second!”

“Sure…Yeah. It hurt though.”

Besides being queasy, her whole stomach felt bruised, but the pain was drifting off in waves. She wiped at her nose again. It had already stopped bleeding. She was healing fast.

Mikasa grabbed Annie by the wrist and stared at her palm.

“Look,” she said, and they watched as a red scrape in its center became pink, shrinking down to nothing but a slight smear of blood. A time-lapse of a flower blooming in reverse.

But Mikasa didn’t let go of her wrist, even when Annie tried to tug away.

“Hey, what are you…” Annie began.

Mikasa pressed her mouth to the blood.

“HEY!”

Annie watched in horror as Mikasa slowly licked the length of her palm.

Annie stumbled back, and Mikasa let go at last, embarrassed.

“I thought maybe your blood could make me stronger,” Mikasa explained.

“You’re a strong human,” Annie muttered. It was the first time she’d admitted to the fundamental difference between them (Mikasa: human, Annie: not). “You don’t need more strength, Mikasa.”

“But I wanna be a vampire. Aren’t they supposed to bite people? Turn them?”

“…My dad’s books don’t say that.”

When Mikasa frowned and cocked her head, Annie went on.

“He has these books. About vampires. He’d go to jail if…sometimes I think I should turn him in.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Well I can’t _now_! They’d, like, investigate me or something.”

“Then why didn’t you do it before?”

“What do you know?”

“I know he starved you. I know he smacked you.”

Annie opened and closed her mouth.

“Bruises,” Mikasa explained. “I used to see your bruises.”

“Oh.”

Mikasa stepped forward. “He can’t hurt you anymore. You could kill him if you really wanted.”

“I don’t want to.” Annie had backed up against the tree. “You’re not seriously…”

Mikasa shook her head. “No. Killing people is bad. And it’s not nice.”

“Yeah…”

“But I do have to test something.”

“You’re gonna try to kill me?” Annie joked, letting out a weak laugh.

Mikasa turned her dark grey eyes on her. “No. But it’s gonna hurt.”

“What.”

“In a minute. But right now see if you can do that thing again. Flickering really fast. But carrying me this time. Let’s have you run all the way to the edge of the cornfield where my parents can’t see.

“Are you sure?” Annie didn’t know if she could stop herself so fast.

“I wanna try it.”

“Okay,” Annie said. She held her arms out and lifted Mikasa with ease, bridal style.

“Let’s go,” Mikasa muttered, but Annie heard her quickening heartbeat like it was her own, and her scent coming off stronger as her blood rushed faster. Mikasa gazed into Annie’s eyes and seemed, for once, excited about something.

Annie smiled and ducked her head to Mikasa’s hair, inhaling for a moment.

“Okay,” Annie said. “Don’t barf.”

Annie started to sprint, Mikasa’s arms clinging around Annie’s neck. She accelerated more and more, and Mikasa whooped in delight.

“Like a rollercoaster!” she said in Annie’s ear.

“Hold on! I’m gonna do it now.”

She took a huge step, planting her foot hard, and sprang forward. The world shifted by, the noise of the wind almost deafening. When she slowed, she was long past the cornfield. Not so surprising, since last time it took a whole tree to stop her. They were near the Ackerman’s house, but Mikasa’s parents weren’t outside or looking from the window. Thank God.

Mikasa…Mikasa was trembling in Annie’s arms.

“Mm…Mmm…”

Annie set her down, and Mikasa got on her hands and knees.

“Are you okay?! Mikasa?”

“Buh…”

Mikasa started heaving, and Annie knew what came next: Mikasa’s breakfast.

“Sorry,” Annie said when Mikasa was all done wiping the scum from her mouth.

“It’s fine. I didn’t expect…”

“Yeah. That was fast.”

Mikasa snickered, then fell into a deep laughter that infected Annie ‘til they were both in tears.

“God. Okay,” Mikasa said. “We have to do our next thing. In the barn.”

They headed past the house for their next training session, Mikasa being as cryptic as ever.

“So this is gonna hurt? When you say ‘hurt’…” Annie ventured, but she couldn’t think of a way to end her question. She’d suffered hurt hundreds of times. From her father. From her classmates. But she was just beginning to feel a churning in her stomach that told her how badly, how desperately, she didn’t want Mikasa to inflict that pain. They were friends now, something Annie had never experienced. From what she understood, friends could roughhouse, but they didn’t injure each other on purpose. They didn’t _want_ to.

Did Mikasa want to?

“Okay,” Mikasa said, shutting the barn door. “Here’s what we do.”

She pointed upward, up to the rafters she’d sat in as Annie devoured her third chicken.

“What?”

“You’re gonna jump,” Mikasa said. “You’re gonna hurt yourself and we’ll see how long it takes for you to feel all better.”

“I could break a leg!”

Mikasa’s eyes grew wide. “Hmm. _May_ be. It’d be neat to see the bone fixing itself. It’ll fix itself. Right?”

“Uh…”

Annie’s father’s books talked about regeneration, but she’d only read about flesh wounds: as much escaped blood and tissue as possible getting sucked back in, the wounds knitting new skin, new blood and tissue cells breeding rapidly to replace what was lost. But bones? Were bones made of cells? Probably. But the rules could be different. Maybe it’d take a month and Annie would have to limp around with a femur snapped in half.

“We could also try cutting you open in different places,” Mikasa offered, pulling a steak knife from her bag.

“Jesus,” Annie muttered. “I’ll jump, _God._ ”

Annie climbed the ladder and crawled onto a beam that led to the center of the barn. She clutched at the wood, terrified she might fall, which was stupid because she _would for sure_ be falling in seconds. On purpose. She stood up and felt dizzy. She stood there and looked at the bare ground, at Mikasa leaning, bored, against the barn wall with her stopwatch and journal. She stood and didn’t dare move until Mikasa said under her breath, “Ha. Still a coward.”

Then Annie tensed her whole body.

Bent her knees, clenched her hands.

[And jumped.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20754644)


	5. pendulum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for better or for worse

She jumped from the rafters and waffled in mid-air. Should she try to land standing? Fall on her back? Her stomach? At the last second, she decided on landing on her feet like a cat. Too late, her right foot took all the weight, causing an audible crack to jar up through her shin.

And then she was on her back and Mikasa was screaming something and Annie was too and her brain was screaming the loudest something like “this is bad this is bad this is bad this is bad.” In a haze of pain, Annie sat up to see a bloody bone jutting from her bare shin. She was halfway toward passing out with the beyond sharp, constant pain. Staring up at the roof, at the beam she’d leapt from, Annie recalculated just how far she must have fallen.

A lot farther. A lot more painful.

Mikasa was crying, “I’m sorry I’m sorry! It looks really bad, Annie, oh my God…”

“No SHIT it looks bad!” Annie rasped in a high-pitched voice. “My…aaaaaaah LEG BONE is out or _something_ JESUS.”

Mikasa was getting up and running for the door.

“NO,” Annie shouted. “You can’t get your mom and dad. You started the stopwatch, right?”

Mikasa slowed, chest heaving. “Yes. But…but I dunno if we can fix this.”

“Come here,” Annie said. “It won’t heal. I can…feel it trying to heal, but nothing’s in the right spot.”

“I don’t know what to do!” Mikasa wailed.

“You gotta push the bone back in.”

“NO!”

“YOU HAVE TO OR THEY’LL KILL ME! They’ll kill me for being a monster!” Annie shivered in a cold sweat of pain and fear, and she whispered, “Please, it hurts so much, and I don’t wanna die yet.”

Mikasa swallowed and nodded, kneeling by Annie’s side.

“Just put your hands on the bone right away and do it,” Annie told her.

Mikasa laid her hands on gently, just like Annie hadn’t asked, and the pain flared from the small touch. Annie shrieked. “You bitch, just fucking do—”

Mikasa pressed hard on Annie’s shin, and Annie blacked out halfway through her scream.

When she came to, the pain was almost gone, but Mikasa was sobbing over her.

“I thought…you…you were gonna DIE…you…..ASSHOLE!” Mikasa huffed out.

“How long was I out?”

Mikasa sniffed. “Um. A minute?”

“Did you click the stopwatch? I’m almost done healing.”

Annie sat up with minimal pain.

“Really?” Mikasa said. “It’s okay?”

“Yeah. It feels like I slept wrong.”

Mikasa snorted. “That’s all?”

“I’m okay, Mikasa.”

Mikasa’s face contorted and she grabbed Annie into a fierce hug. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Annie blinked in surprise. “No, yeah. I’m…I’m fine now.”

The scent of Mikasa’s tears was almost as sweet as her blood, as her warm embrace, and Annie realized then just how much Mikasa cared—deeply and ferociously—for her friends.

Friends? Annie put her hand on the back of Mikasa’s head and pulled her tighter.

“Thank you, Mikasa.”

“You’re welcome,” Mikasa said, warmth in her voice. Then, a whisper: “But if you ever call me a bitch again I’ll slit your throat in the night.”

“Huh?!”

“You heard me.”

Against all common sense, Annie began to laugh. Her giggling quickly descended into hysterical cackles that infected Mikasa until they were both rolling on the barn floor, fighting for breath.

“I’ll walk you home,” Mikasa said, after their giggles had finally died down, after they examined Annie’s healed shin, smeared with blood but otherwise intact.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Annie said.

Mikasa laid a hand on Annie’s. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Annie blushed. “Okay.”

As they stood up, Mikasa didn’t remove her hand, holding Annie’s gently and leading her to the barn door.

“Um. So. I…” Annie said.

Mikasa creaked open the barn door. “What?”

Annie wasn’t sure how to ask…why they were holding hands?

“Nothing,” she finally answered, and a faint smile came to Mikasa’s lips.

She felt Mikasa’s heartbeat, strong but slightly fast, slowing as they walked through the pathway in the corn, steady as they reached the woods that led to Annie’s house.

“We can hangout all summer,” Mikasa prattled on, swinging Annie’s arm in a wide, playful arc.

Why was Mikasa being weird? She was acting like…

Oh.

Mikasa was acting like a real kid.

“Yeah…” Annie said a little breathlessly. “We can have a sleepover.”

“That’s a great idea!”

“Your house,” Annie said. They hopped over a fallen log together.

“…Sure. Armin and Eren can come too. They can’t sleep over ‘cause they’re boys, but they can stay ‘til ten!”

“Oh. Okay.”

When they emerged from the woods to Annie’s long driveway, they stopped and stared at Annie’s home.

“I don’t wanna let you go in there,” Mikasa said, her voice abruptly drained of joy.

“Um. I’ll be fine. I’m super strong, right?” A queasy smile that Mikasa didn’t return.

“Right. I just…wanna be the one to protect you. Like always.”

“What do you mean? You’ve never…”

Mikasa sighed. “Annie. All those times my friends taunted you and pushed you down, I wasn’t really a lookout for teachers who’d stop them. I was there for you.”

“That doesn’t…Why did you let it happen?”

Mikasa tilted her head to the sky. “I don’t know. I thought it was okay. I thought it wouldn’t get out of hand. I liked being near you, no matter what. When they pushed you down and stuff, I’d go and grab Eren’s hand really tight, and he’d get everyone to stop.”

Mikasa’s grip on Annie’s hand was crushing, her heartbeat going wild in Annie’s ears. Annie stood and gawked at the tears falling from Mikasa’s face, her head still turned skyward. Her face wasn’t scrunched up all ugly. Rather, it was a blank mask with only the tears indicating any emotion whatsoever.

“I failed,” Mikasa said. “I’m so, so weak, Annie. After the hamburger thing, I finally told them to stay away from you. It was so stupid easy, I’m an idiot for not doing it forever ago.”

Mikasa let go of Annie’s hand and swiped at her face.

“Mikasa. I love…I love that you were doing that. For me. It’s okay.”

“Really?” A brief flash of wide, rabbit eyes, then nothing.

“Yeah.” Annie smiled again.

With a deep breath, Annie stepped close and kissed Mikasa on the cheek. “Thanks. Let’s meet here tomorrow!” She ran down her driveway, turning back once to see Mikasa still frozen there, her face stunned but otherwise inscrutable.

The following week was enough to turn this summer into the best Annie had ever had. It started with Mikasa meeting her at the edge of the woods.

“Hi,” Mikasa said, a little, mysterious half smile on her face. It was scarier, somehow, than the blank face of the day before.

“Hi,” Annie said back.

Mikasa cocked her head as Annie stood there, fidgeting like an idiot. It felt like she’d forgotten how to stand, had forgotten where to put her arms while she did it. Thankfully, Mikasa stepped forward and gave a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kiss to Annie’s cheek. Then she took Annie’s hand like it was nothing (though it pleased Annie that she felt Mikasa’s heartbeat going way faster than normal).

“Lunch at my house,” Mikasa said, leading her at a trot into the woods.

“Okay!”

“We killed a hen this morning. You can taste it cooked this time.”

“Ah. That’s cool.”

The rest of their walk was silent, only going wrong once they passed through the cornfield that felt so watchful and ominous to Annie. Did Mikasa feel it too? Because halfway in, she dropped Annie’s hand, wiped her hand on her pants to get rid of the sweat. Annie wanted to cry. She must have done something very wrong for Mikasa to reject her like that.

Maybe it was just the sweat thing? The weather today was humid, the sun beating into Annie's skin, into her head. Did Annie sweat so much that she grossed her out? She made a low groan in her throat.

Mikasa stopped dead just before they entered the grassy expanse that lead up to Mikasa’s house.

“I didn’t want to tell my parents yet.”

“Tell them what?” A chill ran up Annie’s spine.

“That I have a girlfriend. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

Annie blinked. “A…”

“I mean,” Mikasa began, searching for words in the corn stalks.

“A girl…”

Mikasa huffed to herself. “I’m not embarrassed by _you_. It’s like, I think they’ll tease me for dating you.”

“Dating?”

“Dummy,” Mikasa said with a scowl she turned on Annie. “You’re the one who kissed me!”

“It wasn’t on the lips!”

Mikasa pouted, a comical look given her usual gloomy demeanor. “Well, why NOT?”

“That’s too fast?!” Annie said.

“Huh,” Mikasa said, thinking it over. “I guess so. But anyway let’s not hold hands around anyone else yet. I like having you as my secret.” Another mysterious smile, this one bigger than the last.

“Okay,” Annie said, her blush huge.

“I’m so glad I get to date a vampire. It’s like a fairy tale!”

“Uh. Is it?”

Mikasa tugged Annie’s arm. “Yeah! Come on. Let’s have lunch.”

Lunch was weirdly thrilling. Watching Mikasa act happier than usual, watching her parents wonder at her good mood. Their little, cozy secret of being girlfriends overshadowed the big, terrible secret of Annie being a vampire. Annie never thought it would happen so soon, and the bullying that had happened over the years made her think it almost never would. But here she was, nine years old with a beautiful girl like Mikasa.

Annie felt so lucky. And cooked chicken was delicious, something she’d been missing her whole life.

Meanwhile, Mikasa’s parents were still trying to figure out their daughter’s sudden happiness.

“My changeling is changing,” Mr. Ackerman said.

“I’m worried she’s growing up,” Mrs. Ackerman muttered as if her daughter weren’t right there at the table. “This wasn’t supposed to happen so soon.”

Mikasa glowered. “I’m normal. You guys are the weird ones.”

“Um. Well…” Annie said, hurtling her parents into laughter that set Mikasa to glaring at Annie like never before.

“If I’m weird,” Mikasa argued, “they made me that way. I’m not adopted. Right?”

“We’ve told you a thousand times,” her dad said. “We found you in the woods. Your wolf parents gave you up.”

“Honey! Not that again.”

“I know it’s not true,” Mikasa said. “I’m not a dumb baby.”

“Levi was found the same way,” Mr. Ackerman went on. “It explains a lot.”

“With wolves?” Mikasa said, distrust in her voice. “I’m not a werewolf, am I?”

Mrs. Ackerman chuckled. “Those aren’t real. If it were, we’d get rid of them like we did those bloodsuckers.”

“Oh,” Mikasa said, voice small.

Bloodsuckers, Annie thought in terror. They don't know they're talking about me.

“I’m sure Levi would be the one to hunt them down,” Mr. Ackerman said.

“Hush,” his wife answered.

“What does that mean?” Mikasa asked, nose wrinkled.

Her parents shared a look Annie couldn’t decipher. Apparently, someone had said something they shouldn’t have.

“More secrets,” Mikasa grumbled. “When is Uncle Levi coming back?”

“No idea. He’s a busy guy,” Mr. Ackerman answered. “Haven’t seen him for months. His job takes him out of town a lot,” he explained to Annie.

“Oh. Okay.”

“So you two have plans today?” Mrs. Ackerman asked.

Mikasa looked to Annie, glee in her eyes. “We’re gonna play in my room!”

Annie nodded. This was the first she’d heard of this, but she was dying to see what Mikasa’s room looked like.

“Let’s go right now!” Mikasa said and shoved the rest of her chicken sandwich in her mouth. Annie followed suit, and they ran off down the hall.

“I have to warn you,” Mikasa said, halting before opening the door. “You can’t tell AN-Y-ONE what’s in my bedroom. GOT IT?”

Annie nodded in terror. What could be that bad?

“Okay,” Mikasa said with a big sigh. She opened the door.

“Oh, what the…” Annie began, her feet moving in on their own accord. “It’s so…so…”

“Pink?” Mikasa said.

Pink was an understatement. The walls, the bedspread, the bed’s canopy, the carpet, the plush unicorns. All of them were pink, pink, pink. It made Annie’s head swim. She’d expected blacks and greys, maybe off-white, but there wasn’t a shred of anything beyond pink, light pink, hot pink, and fuchsia.

“Yeah. Why do you…”

“I have an image to maintain,” Mikasa explained.

Annie held in her next thought: it was now irrevocably cemented in her head that Mikasa was weird as heck. If the reputation Mikasa was going for was “weird,” she’d succeeded.

“People are supposed to take me serious,” Mikasa said. “They can’t if they know I like this little girl color.”

“I like it. It’s cute,” Annie said. An amused smile settled on her face.

“See!” Mikasa cried out, smacking her forehead. “It’s already starting!”

“But I like it,” Annie said, bouncing over to the bed and throwing herself onto it.

“Okay…You still like me?”

Annie sat up. “I’d leave if I didn’t like you.”

This stunned Mikasa for a moment. Then, she moved forward and sat next to Annie. “What do you like about me?”

“Hmmm. I like that I don’t understand you all the way.”

“Cool,” Mikasa said with a shy smile.

“So. What do you like about me?”

“I like that you make me scared.”

“What?”

“When I’m with you, sometimes I feel like you can make me someone else. I dunno.” Her fingers fidgeted in her lap. “I feel like you can make me better or you can make me worse. I wanna see which way it goes.”

“Huh. I don’t get it,” Annie said. “I guess I’ll never understand you all the way. So I’ll always keep liking you.”

“Yeah. That’s good. Understanding is boring.”

“Uh-huh.”

Annie fell back on the bed, Mikasa joining her and cuddling close. Annie’s heart and Mikasa’s both thumped hard, a little out of sync with each other, and Annie waited a few minutes ‘til the thumping steadied.

Mikasa smelled so good, that sweet earth scent pulsing at Annie like waves going over her whole body.

Would Annie really change Mikasa? For better or worse? It scared her too; the answer was hidden behind a misty veil of worry Annie’s hands couldn’t grip. Tentatively, Annie imagined a future where her Mikasa’s love and Annie’s “secret” wouldn’t have to interact. They could just pretend they were two humans, happy for the rest of their lives.

Yeah. Things could be good. The pendulum was swinging in the right direction.

That’s how Annie fell asleep. Peacefully, like never before.

Annie had meals with the Ackermans all that week. Every day, Annie told her father that she was going to the library. She made sure to go there really quick and get a different book to bring home as proof each time. Out of sight of everyone else, Mikasa and Annie gave a kiss on the other’s right cheek when saying hello and goodbye. The little taste of Mikasa that Annie got was intoxicating each time.

“Summer’s almost over,” Mikasa said when they got to Annie’s driveway after a whirlwind day of playing. The end of the week, a tiny anniversary.

“Yeah. Are we gonna be girlfriends at school?”

“Sure!” Mikasa said, eyes lighting up. “It sounds fun.”

“Okay,” Annie said. “See you tomorrow.” They gave each other the usual kiss, and Annie practically skipped up the driveway to her house, elated.

She tucked her library book under her arm and dug the keys from her pocket. Unlocking the front door, her mood sank like it always did when she remembered: this is your life, your father hates you, wants you to know he hates you, wants to hurt you to prove it.

She walked into her living room, alarmed by the utter silence that somehow felt heavier than usual. The cold, hostile atmosphere jarred her, and adrenaline flooded her veins as she tried to process why her senses were going haywire.

As if to confirm her worst suspicions, her father appeared like an omen, skeletal and grave in the kitchen doorway.

“Annie,” he said, and she instinctively took a step back.

“Hi?”

“That was the Ackerman girl,” he said slowly. “Wasn’t it?”

She clutched her book to her chest. “I don’t know. Um. Yes?”

No, no, no, no, no. He’d been looking out the kitchen window. He’d seen them say goodbye. He’d seen everything.

“She’s an outsider,” he said urgently, advancing on her.

“Father. She’s…”

All at once, his hands were gripping her shoulders, pressing her back to the door as he said, “You’ve got to stay away from her. Her whole family.”

He shook her hard like a ragdoll. She whimpered and squirmed.

“Stay far away,” he said. “Especially from—”

He cut himself off and took a deep breath. “Annie. This is important. Do you understand? Tell me, Annie.”

“Father…I…”

Tears bloomed in Annie’s eyes. Mikasa... She couldn’t let her go. Her only friend. Her only link to the world. The only one who knew, and loved, her terrible secret.

Her father’s right hand found its way to the top of her head, his long fingers sinking into her hair and pulling hard.

“I’m doing this for us,” he said in a low voice.

“No no no no no!” Annie cried, resisting as he dragged her to the closet. “She’s my friend I met her at the library today it was fun we read books that’s where I was you can ask the librarian please Father please please!”

With great effort, he threw her into the closet. It took her a long moment to realize that she should go limp and weak, the way he wanted her. In the dark, lying against the wall, she heard the deadbolt of the closet clank shut.

Annie pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed.

When night passed and morning came, she was still secreted in the closet. She had her library book, but it was dark, the light switch inside long defunct, and Annie flicked it on and off obsessively; each click of the switch sounded like God, laughing at her.

Whenever her father locked her in here, Annie would pretend she was a leper, that she stayed away from the outside world for her own good. Now, she played no such games. She really was a dangerous thing. The people in town weren’t the outsiders. It was Annie who didn’t belong.

All night she’d listened to her father move about the house. Her mind went wild, chewing over the same thoughts, voracious and unsatisfied. How long would she stay in here this time? How many hours had it been already? What was this pain in her stomach? What would happen next? When would she taste meat again? When would—

A knock on the front door, three raps against the wood, distinct to Annie as if she were standing right next to it. She heard her father’s brisk strides toward the front of the house. Heard the door unlock. At the same time, she tested the closet lock again. The door was strong, thick wood, the deadbolt a menacing hunk of metal. There was no way out.

“Hello, Mr. Leonhardt,” a girl said in an oddly chipper voice. “I’m looking for Annie!”

...Mikasa?

“I’m afraid she’s out right now,” he said.

The sound of the door closing.

Annie imagined Mikasa standing there, looking as shocked as she had when she’d been kissed on the cheek. For a moment, she’d wait for Annie’s father to relent and open the door again. Then, she’d leave. And Annie would stay.

But no. Another knock. Polite but firm.

“Mr. Leonhardt!” Mikasa chirped. “Are you sure she’s not home?”

Annie’s heart soared as she heard Mikasa opening the door he hadn’t locked.

“What? Get out of here!” he said.

The movement of feet, Mikasa’s rushing in, dodging the heavy footfalls of her father.

“Annie!” she called.

Tears fell as Annie answered, terrified by her own willfulness. “Mikasa! I’m here!”

The knob to the closet rattled. “Annie!”

“UNLOCK IT! GO FAST!”

“I’m—Let go of me!”

“I’ll call the police,” her father said.

“I’ll tell them you locked her up!” Mikasa shrieked. “I’ll tell them you hit her!”

Annie heard dull thumps, an oof from her father. She gasped. Was Mikasa hitting him?

“That’s enough!” he said. “Stand back. I’m putting her in her room.”

The deadbolt unlocked, and Annie fell to her knees. She had to appear weak. Starved. Still, the scent Mikasa carried wafted in, and Annie felt like she could have kicked open the door all along.

Mikasa shoved her father to the side and rushed in, falling into an embrace that Annie accepted without moving. Annie’s eyes were wide and set on her father, who glared down at her from the doorway. Mikasa sniffled, her head resting on Annie’s shoulder.

“I have to go to my room now,” Annie said in a monotone that made Mikasa stiffen. Neither Annie nor her father had broken that terrible gaze.

“Oh,” Mikasa said softly. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Please go home, Mikasa.”

Mikasa gripped her harder. “I love you. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. I’ll see you when summer’s over.”

“Nnnnnn.”

Mikasa’s tears had their own scent, bitter and helpless. Annie wiped one away with her thumb. When Mikasa was ushered out by her father, Annie stuck her thumb in her mouth, the salt flooding her taste buds. She shut her eyes. It was the richest sadness Annie had ever tasted.


	6. hostage (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because under the skin of his disgust toward her, Annie had so recently sensed something else...

Long spikes of metal bit and sank into the window frame, her father’s hammering sealing off any escape. Though with her strength, she could pry loose the nails with her fingertips, or deal a kick to the flimsy bedroom door. But the mere thought of her father catching her sent a bad rush of adrenaline through her veins. She may have been strong, but inside Annie was that same cowering, snot-nosed child.

So Annie allowed herself to be grounded for the remainder of summer. This measure was taken since Annie was a liar. News of her trysts with Mikasa had been pulled from her unwilling throat by her father. All those times she was supposed to be at the library, she admitted, she had been with Mikasa Ackerman, had ingratiated herself with her family, had even broken bread with them.

No, no meat, of course. Never any meat.

The pause after her outright lie—the penetrating distrust in his glossy eyes—nearly buckled her knees, his final disinterested sigh saving her from gushing the truth.

Locked up with an abundance of time, her mind turned over the puzzle of her father once more. Who was this man? What did he want with a child he knew was vampiric? He had to know. Though he was single-minded in his hatred, he was far from stupid. So, in this loveless arrangement, why did he harbor such a threatening beast? She toyed with the idea that he was a vampire himself, religiously forsaking his nature, but it didn’t pan out: he treated her as such a reprehensible other, so apart from him in caste.

Yes, he had to know. Because under the skin of his disgust toward her, Annie had so recently sensed something else—a dark flow of dread.

The day she was rescued from her closet isolation, Annie took the backseat as Mikasa drew up a truce with her father. It was truly fascinating to watch the taciturn Mikasa fearlessly butting heads with her father, who with his flaring anger tried to mask his bewilderment before the precocious, cold child.

The terms. Mikasa wouldn’t call the police. He wouldn’t lay a hand on Annie. Annie wouldn’t leave her room. She would be fine with that because she had to be.

“And I get to visit her every day,” Mikasa had demanded.

“Once a week,” Annie whispered.

Her father jerked his head to her, as if surprised and terrified to find Annie there.

“What?” Mikasa said coolly.

“Once a week. Please.”

Though no one else would understand, the reasons Annie had for this alteration were many: to temper her father’s rage, to bathe in repentance, to disentangle Mikasa from her father, from Annie herself. Lately she saw her life as a wicked, thorned labyrinth she’d unwittingly lured Mikasa into. She watched in horror as Mikasa twisted deeper into dark paths of the maze. And it would do no good to cry out, for in the center of the crawling, brackened walls was a plain enough truth: the Leonhardts resided there, and they were monsters.

No outsiders. This is why no outsiders. You’re gonna take her life and crush it in your too-strong hands. When she was left alone, Annie beat her knuckles against her skull, tearing her hair, and cursing low.

Stupid.

Stupid.

Dumb.

Bad news lurked outside her door on Thursday, the day before Mikasa would have made her first official visit.

“Annie!” she heard Mikasa cry, and she dashed to the locked door, eager for it to slip open. Annie tried the knob that Mikasa didn’t. “Annie,” she said at last. “I’m really sorry.”

“Why?”

“I’m going on vacation for two weeks. I’m sorry. I really, really tried to get out of it. My parents already paid for plane tickets and hotels. If I told them the real reason, it could get you in trouble.”

“So…you’re visiting me today. Right?”

A short silence. “Your dad won’t let me see you.”

“Father? Father, please!” Annie pleaded. From the guarded chill in Mikasa’s voice, from the weight of the air itself, she could tell he was lurking just behind Mikasa.

“Visits are Friday,” he said. “I shouldn’t have allowed her this far.”

Annie laid her head to the door and fought back a wave of bile.

“Just one minute…”

“I’m sorry,” Mikasa’s voice said, distant and underwater.

“No…”

Annie sank to her knees and put her face to the crack at the bottom of the door. The scent of Mikasa barely reached her.

“I wanna see my friend. I wanna see my friend.”

Mikasa’s knees dropped to the floor. “I’ll be back on a Wednesday. I’ll see you that Friday,” Mikasa said, a hitch breaking her voice. “I promise you, Annie.”

“Leave,” her father said.

Cramming her hand as far as they could go under the door, Annie felt the brush of Mikasa’s fingertips against her own. How long had it been since she’d serrated Mikasa’s finger with her teeth, coating her throat in a lifeblood that had eluded her for years?

Mikasa yelped and withdrew her hand, crying out in a scuffle against her father. Annie leapt to her feet. If he was dragging her by the hair, she’d kill him. She’d really, really kill him.

But Mikasa’s voice was a gentle solace, several feet away but promising she’d never leave her alone. She would never let him hurt her.

Annie fell back on her butt and cradled her head in her palms, sure that Mikasa was the one who would hurt and suffer most of all.

“Go have fun,” Annie heard a stranger’s voice say. “Leave.”

Summer drew the fat from her bones, siphoning her energy. With exhaustion building pressure inside her skull, she laid on her bed, eyes clenched shut. A constant stream of cool air poured from the vents in her ceiling, igniting a longing for the baking heat that incited locusts to drone endlessly, just beyond her window. The irony of yearning for sunshine, which had always drummed into her skin unpleasantly, was not lost on her. She wanted what she couldn’t have. She wanted to know if Mikasa was someplace beautiful like Disneyland or Hawaii, and berated herself for not asking, for not breaking out of her self-imposed prison and riding on a plane for the first time. Never coming back.

She’d always loved to escape into a book, but the ones her father had given her were bought when she was very small. Counting, she had thirty-eight books, most of them kindergarten books that were fast enough reads to provide no satisfaction. Though with nothing else to feed her mind, she read them again. Thirty-eight books, and, she discovered, 3,462 pages exactly. To keep her mind busy, she began to memorize the shortest, then the second shortest, then the third.

The rest dismayed her: books puffed up with heroes and heroines exercising the freedom to ride dragons and fight witches, curses, and armies. The hero was always the “chosen one,” destined to live through the whole saga. How exciting could it be, such a special person facing off against a hungry lion in chapter two of book one of nine? Annie had the special superpower, but all the pain of no guarantees.

Ultimately, the chosen one saved everyone, and Annie was nobody’s savior. Hour by hour, she grew more certain that she was only a calamity destined for killing and hurt. If anyone else but Mikasa had found out about her powers, they’d kill Annie or find somebody who could.

In her discomfort, she took to hugging Lily Cat. Annie lavished her attention on the Persian, who shouldered her hours of petting like a God-given right. But even the extravagant cat grew weary of this, and Annie held her tight, Lily Cat mewling low in her throat, heart hammering indignantly as Annie’s soothing hushes did nothing.

After Annie finished these sessions, the cat would dart under the bed and moan, leaving Annie with a bedspread coated in snowy white fur. She knew she was losing her mind when she made a game of cleaning up every single strand. She’d dump the hair into the same plastic bag she used to clean Lily’s litterbox, the waste taken away by her father every night.

In a journal she counted days, laboring obsessively over the hours and weeks of her separation from Mikasa. Summer storms clustered, rumbling outside her window, flecking it with droplets. She only wished she could reach her hand out into the hot air and cooling rain, her favorite part of summer the dueling temperatures she’d been sequestered from this year. She could pass a whole day at peace if it rained enough. Her father made no comment when he entered to see her with an ear pressed to the window, eyes shut in meditative focus.

The intensity of the thunder and lightning comforted her. It was either proof that God was angry or that he was lovingly washing the world, nourishing it. Either way, she felt God in every boom, and crash, in the howling hum of the wind.

For hours at a time, Annie stared out her window from the bed, even into the deep of night, until she didn’t know how long she’d gone without sleep, the counting of days and hours forgotten, insomniac nights bunching into each other, slippery with their confusion of time.

Annie woke one morning and wept bitterly when she found a heart drawn on her window. It could only have been Mikasa, back from her long trip, who had heated the glass with her mouth and stroked a message of love into the fog. How many minutes had she missed her by? Had Mikasa peered in and watched her sleep? Annie drew a second heart on her side and hoped for a third. Today must be Wednesday. Maybe even Thursday. It filled her with a restless hope.

With her thoughts itching to latch onto any distraction, Annie remembered the best Christmas gift Annie had ever received from her father: a used purple Gameboy Color with a Pokémon Red cartridge jammed in its back. She’d played the game deep into the night, secluding herself under her covers with a flashlight shining on the screen that Nintendo had neglected to give a backlight.

Something about making her Pokémon stronger—powering them up battle by battle, in chunks of experience points, levels, new moves learned—invigorated Annie to the point where she couldn’t stop thinking about it when she was in class, haplessly doodling images of Raticates and Sandshrews. She didn’t have access to the internet, so she was unable to know what level her Pokémon would evolve at. The surprise of the Pokémon shifting always made her squeal in delight.

She had never completed the game. Her father ended her late-night sessions by seizing the Gameboy and throwing it away. She’d searched the whole house for a year, desperately missing her Charizard, her Raichu, her Gyrados, her friends.

The game was gone. Now, Annie pixelated herself and played it inside her own head.

Sitting on her bed, eyes shut, her hands maneuvering over a small book she pretended was the console, Annie waded through the tall grass. The music came to her easily as she wandered Viridian Forest in search of a Pikachu. Annie forced herself to find Weedles, Kakunas, Metapods, other trainers that she battled easily with her starter Pokémon. She walked the spiraling pathways of grass and journeyed back south to get more pokeballs and poison antidotes.

Her fingers grew to feel the cross of the arrow buttons, the A and B buttons, the start button that guided her through her Pokedex, inaccurate to the actual game but kept religiously ordered in her mind.

Annie made the game hard for herself. She nearly caught a Pikachu, but her last attack was a critical hit that caused the rare monster to faint. She grumbled to herself and kept trying.

Hours went by like this, catching a Pikachu, nicknaming him Shocker, leveling up as many Pokémon as she could before walking to the next town.

Then there were the towns and the paths she invented for herself. Crimson Road, Ebonyville, Twilight Town. Dark and wonderful places full of Pokémon no one else in the world had ever caught. She was about to catch a whole new breed of fire Pokémon when she startled at the sound of her door rattling, a little girl’s voice shouting her name.

The door rattled and Mikasa shoved her way in, past her dad, flying with an oomph into Annie’s arms.

“You smell good,” Annie said, inhaling the vague scent of salt water.

Mikasa pulled back and laughed, swiping at her eyes.

“You’re tan,” Annie went on. Her hand stroked Mikasa’s cheek, much darker than she’d ever seen it.

“We went to California. And Disneyland.”

Tears sprang to Annie’s eyes. “That sounds fun.”

“Yeah. I tried to have fun for you, like you said. Are you okay?” she whispered, and Annie nodded tightly.

“Was she locked in here this whole time?” Mikasa said to Annie’s father, bitterness infecting her voice. “What if she has to go to the bathroom?”

“I let her out,” he said, strained.

“I shower too,” Annie said. There was a need to be on her father’s side, to placate. “Every day.”

Mikasa ignored her and glanced about the room. She eased herself off the bed and slowly strolled the perimeter, touring her hands along the bookshelves, peeking into the closet.

“Are you feeding her? What are you feeding her?”

“Her diet hasn’t changed.”

“What is it?”

He sighed and looked to the ceiling. “Bread. Greens. Fruit.”

“No meat?”

Annie’s whole body tensed, sitting on the bed watching the exchange.

“No. Get out.”

“I have to check her. For bruises.”

Their eyes shifted to her. It had felt like she didn’t exist, as if she was a ghost or a dreamer, hovering slightly above and wholly apart.

“He didn’t hit me,” Annie protested.

“Take off your hoodie, shirt, and pants.”

Annie’s cheeks flared up. “NO!”

“You can keep the underwear,” Mikasa said, as if it were some kindness in the humiliation.

Annie gave her a glare that did nothing to melt Mikasa’s bored composure. It was like she didn’t care Annie could break every bone in Mikasa’s body, then eat everything else. But Mikasa had the stronger glare and will to match, so Annie took off her clothes and stood shivering as Mikasa circled her. Annie shut her eyes and grimaced. With her father and Mikasa here, she was simultaneously exposed before the one she hated most and the one she cherished above all.

“Put them back on,” Mikasa said at last.

“I told you.”

“Yes.”

It didn’t matter. He could have hit her this morning and the bruises would have already healed. It dawned on Annie that Mikasa might be doing this for show, pretending Annie was a regular human in front of her dad.

Annie scrambled into her clothes.

“I want to be alone with her now,” Mikasa said to Annie’s father.

“No. Talk in front of me.”

Mikasa startled. “Are you really in the…in the position to say no?”

“I’m the adult here. And I’ve never laid a hand on her. Have I, Annie?”

Annie’s eyes went huge. Her breath stuttered out. “I…”

When she couldn’t speak, afraid of her voice breaking, she shook her head fast, eyes on the floor. She could feel Mikasa looking at her, disappointed.

“You’re a liar,” Mikasa accused.

Annie jerked her face up, tears in her eyes as she prepared to fight, but Mikasa was facing her father.

“Leave,” he said.

Once again, Mikasa didn’t listen. She walked up to Annie and embraced her.

“I’ll see you next week,” she muttered in Annie’s ear.

“Yeah.”

Mikasa kissed her on the cheek, keeping her face there until Annie got the sense to kiss her back.

“School’s starting soon,” Mikasa said to her father. “What will you do then?”

“Perhaps she’ll be homeschooled.”

“No. My uncle knows the police. They’ll believe him.”

His chest rose. “After summer, she’ll go to school and come straight home.”

“Will you?” Mikasa asked, once again putting her on the spot.

Annie’s teary eyes searched her implacable gaze. “I don’t…”

“You have choices to make,” Mikasa said. “See you next time.”

Mikasa walked out, so poised, like a businesswoman closing a deal. Her father stood for a moment staring at Annie, hand on the door from the outside. It slammed shut, and the definitive sound of the old metal key in the lock pierced into her.

Annie flopped onto her bed, on her belly, burying her face in her pillow.

She could break down that door. She really could. She could run so far. Why didn’t she? Mikasa had once said Annie could kill her father. It was all true. Annie did have a lot of choices to make, but she wasn’t as smart as Mikasa, nor half as confident. Tears sank into her pillow. She just laid there. Deciding nothing.

In between Friday visits, her life was dull enough that the monitoring of a new spiderweb at the base of her window grew into a compulsion. A fat, hairy brown spider had laced a complex design cutting a diagonal across base of the window.

Annie collected ants, lured by sandwich crumbs she dropped on the floor. And little fruit flies, too lazy to avoid being pinched between her fingers and ever so precisely laid across a sticky strand of web. She cheered in delight when they caught there, thrashing wildly and vibrating the translucent strings, alerting the web master.

Today, the burly spider flexed its legs but stayed put. Annie fidgeted.

“Come onnn.”

She’d been waiting days for this, but she guessed the spider didn’t need to eat every day like her. He hadn’t touched much of anything since Mikasa was last here, maybe longer than that. Annie just wanted to see someone enjoy something. She licked her lips and continued to stare, unblinking at the lazy spider.

It took an hour for something to happen, but it came as a blur of white pouncing onto the sill. Lily Cat waved her paw frantically into the web and pulled the spider into her mouth. Her finicky chomping and lip smacking pulled Annie from her shock at last.

“YOU DUMB CAT!”

She snatched Lily Cat by the scruff and held her aloft. Lily Cat mewled, enraged. Annie pulled her hard to her chest and squeezed her there, torn between punishing the mischievous cat and simply holding her still, hushing her. As she gripped her squirming pet, she realized she’d gotten what she wanted: a beast had hunted and devoured its prey. She eased her grip.

“Sorry, girl,” Annie said.

She pressed her face deep into Lily’s luxuriant coat. The week had been hard. Mikasa’s last visit was so short.

Maybe she was bored of Annie.

Plus, cooped up in here, Annie felt weaker than she’d ever been, the vegetarian diet accosting her whole body. She felt like her bones were skinnier, the way they jutted just beneath the skin, and she feared she was losing the marrow inside them. She imagined her bones collapsing inward. Destruction from within.

She let her tears fall onto the cat, then took in a shaky breath.

“Ahhhh.”

She took another breath, and her mouth filled with saliva. The cat’s heartbeat thundered, perhaps sensing her owner’s malintent. Lily Cat bucked violently in Annie’s arms.

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up,” Annie growled. She took her face from her cat’s side, looking at the terror in her pet’s vivid blue eyes. Drool coursed from Annie’s mouth, piling on Lily Cat. For a frightening moment, Annie felt like a vicious god. The horrifying idea of red matting Lily Cat’s white fur was the only thing that halted her. She threw her hands wide, letting the cat sprint off her lap, burrowing as deep as she could among the junk under the bed.

Annie’s stomach churned, empty and jolted by her own disgust. The cat moaned painfully from the hiding place it would take seconds for Annie to tear apart. Annie covered her ears and curled up on the bed.

“Be good,” she told herself. “Be good, be good,” she chanted until she slept.

“My chickens keep escaping,” Mikasa said one day, in lieu of greeting.

Annie and her father both stared.

“We don’t know what it is,” Mikasa said, eyes boring into Annie.

“I don’t know either,” Annie said. Was this some kind of code? The puzzle would do well to fill her mind for days. Was something else really eating the chickens or was Mikasa saying it for another reason? Mikasa had to know it wasn’t Annie. Right?

“I’m serious,” Mikasa said. “We’re worried. My family.”

Annie could only nod. Her mind strayed to a thought that had come to her lately, when she was wondering about her nature. Were there others in the human realm, ones who didn’t belong here? When Annie looked at Mikasa, she saw a guarded fear in her eyes.

“That’s weird,” Annie said, and in their exchange she knew it would be the first thing they talked about when fifth grade began.

Annie picked up Lily Cat from the bed and handed her to her father. “The cat is bored of being in here all the time. I want to put her litterbox and food in the living room.”

“You’ll still clean up and feed her,” he said.

Annie nodded. She had to get the cat away from her.

“Annie, you look thin,” Mikasa said, stepping closer.

There was a scent Mikasa carried today, different than usual. She always smelled inviting, like a meal, something imminently satisfying. But there was something drifting over to Annie every time they spoke.

“I’m okay,” Annie said, but her words felt as hollow as her body.

“Come here,” Mikasa said.

Her arms wrapped around Annie so that Mikasa’s back was to her father. She kissed Annie full on the lips, and Annie’s body jerked electric as the scent of Mikasa’s mouth flooded her nose. Annie’s lips parted, and Mikasa slid a tough strip of meat into Annie’s mouth. She pulled back from Annie, confident and amused by Annie’s terror.

She felt like she could faint at how badly she wanted to chew and swallow right there. The salty, smokey taste sat on her tongue like a sacrifice waiting for holy slaughter. It was another few minutes until Mikasa and her father slipped out of the room, and Annie fell to her knees, sobbing mutely as she swallowed Mikasa’s gift.

When the food passed down her throat, her mouth kept on salivating, an endless flow dribbling to the hardwood floor.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you. Savior,” she whispered. [“My savior.”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23867017)


	7. the dancing girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ll see you around, Annie.”

“We have _stuff_ to do before fifth grade starts,” Mikasa informed Annie’s father.

He folded his arms, hunching his skeletal frame in the doorway, and Annie inched farther behind Mikasa, letting her dominate the tiny bedroom floor.

“I’ve already purchased her school supplies,” her father said icily, as if all the spirals, folders, ballpoint pens, and the time it took to buy them tallied up, for him, to some considerable personal loss.

Fifth grade would begin on Monday. The weeks of Annie’s confinement had passed, with Mikasa’s cherished Friday visits coming as the single saving grace. And with each parting kiss, Mikasa would furtively pass Annie a bit of meat, a sustenance Annie would anticipate with an impatience bordering on the insane. All in the blind-spot of her father’s watchful eye.

“We have stuff to do,” Mikasa said again and grabbed Annie tight by the wrist. “Look here. She’s outgrown her clothes. My mom’s gonna take us shopping at Stohess. Don’t worry, Mr. Leonhardt. She’ll pay for everything.”

Stohess _MALL?,_ Annie thought, giving Mikasa a doubletake. In her whole nine years, she’d hardly set foot outside of town, and now she was suddenly going shopping at the nicest mall in the county?

Her hope was bogged down by Mikasa’s dutiful description of each and every flaw in Annie’s clothes. It was true Annie had shot up in height over the last few months. She was by no means tall, but now (under Mikasa’s unflagging scrutiny) Annie blanched at how her hoodie sleeves fell shy of her wrists, how the bottoms of her jeans (Mikasa was swift to point out) cut tight above the ankles, how the stains and tears needed fixing at once.

She did have a point. Being trapped in this room for most of the summer, Annie hadn’t worn shoes in weeks, but she was certain her old gym shoes would pinch when she put them on… even more than they had before.

Still, mall shopping? The idea of two girls going shopping with a mom… it sounded so normal, so impossibly human that Annie rejected and craved it all at once, a frantic need swelling inside her to at last set foot in the flashy Stohess Mall.

Her father didn’t soften to Mikasa’s proposal. “I cannot have her running around such a place unsupervised.”

Annie held her breath and bounced on her heels as Mikasa fired back, undaunted. “My mom’s supervising.”

“I won’t trust someone I’ve never met, in a city Annie doesn’t know. I will take Annie to the department store on Main, here in Trost.”

Annie tensed, her eyes brimming with hot tears. That was it; she wouldn’t get what she wanted. She never would. Going shopping with her father would suck the magic right out. He’d take her to the same bargain store they’d gone to for years and buy her half a dozen t-shirts; one new, plain hoodie; jeans with legs pooling loose at her ankles, large on purpose to avoid investing in a size up as her body stubbornly continued to grow.

No. She still had a chance, she thought, and shook her head to resolve herself. She so badly wanted to go to the mall! To try on beautiful swishing skirts and dresses! To eat greasy mall food and to window-shop ad nauseam and then finally to buy things! To buy things for herself! She needed to go with Mikasa, to the mall, on the very last Saturday of summer. She had to go, at once hellbent on being normal. On being a kid.

Then her tongue began spooling out words before she knew it, unrolling a dangerous thread of consciousness she was powerless to stop. “But Father, Mrs. Ackerman will pick some really nice things for me. Teachers don’t like it when kids wear old clothes or clothes that get worn out so easy. Mikasa’s mother will buy me lots of nice things because when the clothes get worn out that’s a real bad sign and they think the family is neglectful. It doesn’t have to be true but it’s not good. They’ll think that about you, about us. I don’t wanna get you in trouble, Father, so please let me go and I’ll never ask for anything else all year or ever again.”

Her face flushed as she stared into his beady, widened eyes, and—as was the unstoppable custom of an abused child—she calculated the fury in his otherwise innocuous stare back. Had she really just threatened him?

“I’m not calling you cheap,” she added in a tiny squeak.

“You know she’s right, sir,” Mikasa said in a soft voice, though her grip on Annie’s wrist hadn’t yielded in the slightest. “My mom will watch us. And she’s paying for the clothes.”

For a moment, his gaze shifted to the few, threadbare items hanging limp in Annie’s closet. At last he tightened his mouth, shut his eyes, and inhaled sharply through his nose. “Send the bill. I won’t be accepting handouts from a stranger.”

Mikasa gave her hand a squeeze, her heartbeat jolting with adrenaline in Annie’s ears, the gallop at pace with her own racing pulse. Did he give in just now? Was it that simple? Were they going to the mall?

Mikasa nodded smartly and gave her father a supercilious little grin. “Why of course you can pay, Mr. Leonhardt. We’ll be here at nine sharp tomorrow to pick Annie up.”

She hadn’t expected Mrs. Ackerman to come to the door that morning, dressed elegantly in a light green blouse and a flowy, flower-printed pink skirt, a black leather purse draped from the crook of her arm, her dark hair cascading in a loose braid down her shoulder. And from the stunned look on his face, Annie’s father hadn’t expected her either.

“So nice to meet you,” she said, her voice hitting like sunshine. “But you work at the pharmacy, right? I suppose I’ve met you several times over!”

“Perhaps,” he answered.

Her radiant grin tightened. “Right. We’re _so_ happy that Mikasa has made a new friend as delightful as your daughter. She has trouble opening up sometimes,”—here she patted a very gloomy Mikasa on the head—“so we’re just thrilled that she and Annie are getting along so well!”

“Yes. Good,” Annie’s father answered.

In all the silences that followed his terse words, Annie stared past Mrs. Ackerman out the door, listening to the steady drone of cicadas basking in the heat. Better to focus on that than the impression her father was making, not only of himself, but of the loveless upbringing he’d clearly given her.

“And you really don’t need to worry about footing the shopping bill…” Mrs. Ackerman was saying.

A monotone, “I will pay.”

Annie’s attention strayed to Mrs. Ackerman, who fiddled endlessly with a long strand of hair and pulled her purse to her shoulder, gripping the strap ‘til her knuckles grew white. She’d never seen Mikasa’s mom so unsettled. Besides how chilly her father’s responses were, Annie guessed that Mikasa had hinted plenty to her, beforehand, about how cold and strange he could be.

“Let’s go now,” Annie said in a strained voice.

“Annie’s never been to a mall before,” Mikasa said.

“Really!” Mrs. Ackerman exclaimed. Her hand dropped from her hair, and she looked to Annie’s father for explanation.

“My daughter is quite sickly. I don’t want her tempted to eat the mall’s junk food.”

Annie’s face soured. He’d already given her a bland little sack lunch she had planned to forget in the car.

Mrs. Ackerman smiled with her eyes closed, a play at carefree relaxation. “Yes, of course. We’d better get going. Oh!” she cried. “What a beautiful cat!”

Lily darted past her, a blur of white fluff leaping into the scant garden just outside the door.

“Lily Cat!” Annie called, frantic. “Nooo. She’s supposed to be indoor. Always.” She fretted, debating going after her, then pleading with a stare at her father, hoping he’d snatch Lily up and take her back inside. Knowing he’d do no such thing.

“She’ll be okay,” Mikasa said and grabbed Annie’s hand in her own. “She’ll just eat a bunch of cicadas and fall asleep.”

Annie breathed out and smiled worriedly at Mikasa. “Okay,” she said, watching Lily snatch at a ball of fluff carried on the wind. “Let’s go to the mall.”

The three women stepped out the door, Lily Cat all but forgotten as she played and trounced ever closer to the woods.

“Uh, so nice to meet you, Mr. Leonhardt!”

“Yes. Quite.” He all but slammed the door in their faces, locking it immediately.

Mrs. Ackerman bristled, stared in disbelief at the door for a microsecond, and walked at a fast clip to the car, wasting no time in starting the ignition.

“Okay,” she sighed, and as she smoothed her hair in the rearview mirror, she locked eyes with Annie. “They have really good cinnamon sugar pretzels at the mall. No harm in trying one. Right, girls?”

Stohess Mall gleamed huge and opulent in the haze of the parking lot, and Annie gasped as they passed through the wide doors to an indoor path lit by a modern glass atrium that flooded its two stories with sunlight. The white and blue checkered floors echoed with the footsteps of a thousand shoppers, all eager to squeeze out the last drops out of summer. Storefronts promising slashed prices beckoned Annie in every direction, and all of that with the tantalizing scent of frying food overstimulated her to the point of giddiness; Mikasa had to hold her arm tight to keep her from running off.

“We gotta buy what we came for!” Mikasa said. “I can’t believe this is your first time.”

“Can we ride that?” Annie shouted, pointing at the escalators.

Mikasa and her mom burst out laughing. “Yeah. They’re fun.”

Annie crouched in fascination, watching how smoothly the stairs rose from the ground.

“Hurry up!” Mikasa called down to her, and Annie saw the Ackermans were already standing halfway up the escalators, shrinking away from her.

Annie straightened and tentatively hopped onto a step with a yelp. Mikasa laughed again, the sound carrying down to Annie so rich and unexpected that she grinned and chuckled even as the stairs bore her upward at a frightening speed. She crouched down and watched as she was pulled further and further from the ground.

“Stand or you’ll get sucked into the top,” Mikasa yelled from up high.

“WHAT?” Annie jumped to her feet.

“Don’t tease,” Mrs. Ackerman said lightly. “Okay, get ready to hop off now, Annie!”

She got to the top and lurched onto stable ground, careful to not get her feet sucked in.

“People have DIED on escalators,” Mikasa explained. “That lady in Asia got her hair sucked in and her scalp ripped right—"

“Okey dokey!” Mrs. Ackerman sang. “This store has cute kids’ clothes.” She bent to mutter a “hush” in Mikasa’s ear and led them into a shop fronted with stylish, gleaming white mannequins dressed in autumn plaids and denim jeans.

“You don’t want any pink?” Mrs. Ackerman asked Mikasa.

“No.”

“I’ll get something pink and you can borrow it,” Annie whispered.

Mikasa’s blank face couldn’t hide the way her cheeks reddened. “Okay.”

“Secrets? You two are so quiet,” Mrs. Ackerman hummed, hands skimming the racks. She pulled a frilly purple top out, holding it before Mikasa. “Too many sequins?”

“Too many everything.”

Mrs. Ackerman held her head high. “If you want to wear black, wear black. But I’ll make sure you get some shades of gray too. Liven things up a bit, missy.”

“This would look pretty on you,” Annie said of a dark blue pleated skirt.

“Pretty? Really?”

“Yeah!”

“Mikasa hasn’t worn a skirt in ages. Honey—”

“I’ll try it on,” Mikasa said and snatched the skirt from Annie. “But you try one on too, so we can match.”

Furrowing her brow, Mrs. Ackerman glanced between the two girls. “Okay…”

Annie lingered by a rack of shorts patterned with vibrant Hawaiian flowers and rubbed the fabric with her thumb, taking a single guilty peek at the price tag.

The Ackermans had walked a ways ahead, their low voices carrying to Annie as easily as if she were standing right beside them.

“Aren’t you gonna shop, Mom?”

“No, no,” Mrs. Ackerman said softly and patted her stomach. “I’ll be too big for them in a couple months.”

Annie bit her lip. She was pregnant? It didn’t seem like something she should be privy to, so she ignored it. Learning secrets from her vampire hearing was a double-edged sword; she’d already overheard enough mall-goers’ very private dramas—gossip, breakups, affairs—traveling to her from leagues away.

For half an hour, the girls raided the juniors’ section, Annie prodding Mikasa that she’d look cute in this shirt or that, to the point where Mrs. Ackerman’s arms were loaded with clothes Mikasa wouldn’t normally be caught dead in. Annie was really excited. Mikasa would look so lovely in these colors, these styles so different from the plain black sweaters and jeans she usually sported in the fall.

“We should try on soon,” Mrs. Ackerman said. Then her eyes lit up. “Hey girls, should we get training bras?”

“Train… Uh, MOM!”

“I’m teasing, dear. We’ll do that later.”

“Not funny.”

Annie’s own face burned red, but watching Mikasa sputter like that was worth it.

Arms saddled with layers of tops and jeans, they went into neighboring changing rooms, coming out to model for Mikasa’s mom.

“I hate this,” Mikasa said of a puffy-sleeved dress-shirt. “And it’s too small.”

“We’ll get another size.”

“You missed the part where I hated it.”

“I think it looks cute, honey!”

“It does,” Annie agreed.

Mikasa paused, eyes searching the ground. “Well it needs to go up a size or two.” Then she stormed back into the changing room and slammed the little slatted wooden door. Mrs. Ackerman beamed at Annie, her suspicions about them at last confirmed.

Annie shrugged, red-faced, and backed into her own room.

Mikasa wouldn’t be too happy about her mom knowing they were girlfriends, Annie thought, but it was Mikasa’s own fault for being so stupid obvious. As for Annie, she didn’t really mind. Girls dated girls, though the ones she’d seen on TV were older and kissed each other on the mouth and things. She and Mikasa had only done that because Mikasa snuck Annie those pieces of meat. Hardly romantic. And honestly kind of gross.

Next Annie came out in a pale blue skirt and a green, half-sleeve button up. It was… fancier than anything her father had ever bought her, and in it she felt alien and wrong.

Mikasa wore a pink and white striped button-down and navy-blue slacks. She picked at the sleeves and shifted her weight from foot to foot. When she glanced up at her, Annie knew she was supposed to say something.

“Pretty!”

Mikasa’s body stilled, calm sinking into her eyes. “Thanks. You look really beautiful in that. I have enough clothes now, right?” she asked her mom.

Annie’s face burned once more. With a covert glance, she eyed herself in the mirror. For her special outing today, she’d done her hair up in a more careful bun before she left home, and the cut of the outfit fell slim and sharp against her frame, the colors doing something to bring out the blue of her eyes. “Really beautiful,” she thought with wonder.

Mikasa’s mom hid a smile behind her hand. “Yes, we have enough. You should be good for the start of school. Annie, do you need anything else? More jeans? Jackets?”

Annie looked, confused, at the dozens of items hung in her fitting room. All hers. “That’s more than I’ve ever had…”

Mrs. Ackerman frowned as her eyes widened. “Maybe we should find some heavy stuff for winter too? And shoes.”

Annie grimaced. To be a charity case…

Mikasa tugged on her mom’s sleeve. “Mom, we’re hungry. Food court now.”

Weighed down with overflowing bags of clothes, they crammed themselves in to a tiny, two-person table at the food court beneath the peak of the atrium, elbow to elbow with competing shoppers. Mrs. Ackerman bought them greasy Chinese chicken, eggrolls, and fried rice from a steaming little restaurant next to a McDonald’s, extracting a promise from Annie never to say a word about this to her father, to which Annie wholeheartedly agreed. The cheese and lettuce sandwich her father had packed for her that day sweated alone in the closed, baking heat of Mrs. Ackerman’s minivan.

The chicken was delicious, the tangy orange sauce almost as good as the hot, soft meat underneath. There were no bones to work around, and Annie’s teeth tore the flesh so cleanly, no need to take frantic tugs like she would at the tough muscle and sinew of a fresh-killed chicken from Mikasa’s barn. She glanced at her now, her cheeks stuffed with as much food as Annie’s. The other week, Mikasa had said someone else was stealing chickens, as if in Annie’s absence a new beast of prey had come to stalk the small fowl, a top predator in her stead. The mystery had to be important to Mikasa, if she told Annie in front of her father like she did.

Mikasa swallowed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Can we go to the arcade?” She cut a glance at Annie, who read it correctly as “we need to talk.”

“No pretzels?” Mrs. Ackerman asked.

“We’re full.”

“Well, okay. Need quarters?”

“Nuh-uh. I have some in my bag.” Mikasa patted the brown messenger bag always slung around her side. Annie had only an inkling of its strange contents, hoping it didn’t hold the steak knife Mikasa had once so casually brandished in her barn, threatening to draw blood, months ago.

“Um. I don’t have any money,” Annie said.

Because jeez! Why was Mikasa passing up the opportunity to get free money from her mom? It rankled Annie, a kid who had to hide the fact that she saved _any_ change she found from her father, a kid who couldn’t buy a trinket, a pack of stickers, a keychain—anything he could point to—without punishment. This time, Annie would demand Mrs. Ackerman’s charity and keep the leftover change for herself. If Mikasa’s mom forgot to ask for it back.

In answer to Annie, Mrs. Ackerman only gave a quick, smiling nod, and sifted her hand through her purse to fill Annie’s palm with cool, silver coins. It stung a little, to know that this loose change, given so freely, was maybe the most she’d ever held.

Overwhelmed by the hoard of quarters, Annie fought tears, thanked Mrs. Ackerman, and stuffed the coins in her pocket, laden down with new, heavy wealth.

“Let’s go!” Mikasa said and unshyly took Annie’s hand to sprint with her down to the arcade. They reached a dark, narrow stretch of store lit by blue and red neon lights from both modern and retro eighties games lined shoulder to shoulder. The machines cried out with enticing jingles and blips, their pixelated displays projecting images of heroic characters evading and squashing their enemies. The air conditioner above expelled a constant stream of crisp, cool air into the tight space, and Annie broke out in an eager goose flesh. The black walls and sticky black linoleum floor made it seem like a serious place, a place, to Annie, where big kids went. These machines didn’t spit tickets; the only prize was the pride of punching in your name on a high score. And the sweaty, intense teens skulking the aisles confirmed it: this was a place for big kids, a serious place for serious fun.

“Racing!” Mikasa exclaimed, and they fell into twin highbacked leather seats with steering wheels and screens of flowing, 8-bit roads. They bent to feed in the quarters swiftly, as if the outcome of their game depended also on the speed with which they began. The mystery of the slain chickens retired to the back corner of Annie’s mind.

She got comfortable with the controls, the wheel warming in her hands as she jerked it around in imaginary test swerves while Mikasa chose their course.

“Ready?” Mikasa said.

Annie gave a curt nod, all of her focus honed on the screen’s stoplight changing from red to yellow to green. A shrill whistle sounded, and the race began.

After a stint of Annie confusing the brake with the accelerator, Mikasa’s car surged ahead in a handsome, confident lead. But Annie gained on her, maneuvering past the obstacles—pedestrians, garbage trucks, turtles—that blocked the road and occasionally made Mikasa grumble under her breath, her little car spinning out of control with a comical wobbling sound.

Then, Annie was ahead of her. Far ahead. Wait… Was Annie _good_ at this? The rare times she’d played videogames at school, she’d failed to a chorus of laughter from her classmates. Driving backwards in Mario Kart, falling to her death in Smash Bros, tossing a Wii remote into Historia Reiss’s poor face. So why was she suddenly amazing? Why was this game so laughably easy?

As she sped along, she effortlessly swerved around a dog leaping into the middle of the road, then collected some powerups and coins. It had to be the vampire powers. In their training session this summer, Mikasa had tested strength, speed, and healing, but hadn’t specifically touched on Annie’s powers of reflex, of sharpened hearing, of sight. It was the only explanation that made sense to her.

Mikasa hung in there, though her ire radiated off her in tense waves. Despite her frustration, she didn’t allow Annie the satisfaction of lapping her. Annie supposed she could have completely wiped the floor with Mikasa, but she was hardly trying at this point. It was kind of a boring game.

Her car whizzed past the checkered finish line, and a golden “WINNER” emblazoned itself on Annie’s screen. She’d gotten the 8th fastest time on the machine’s record, punching in an “ANI” that would stay on the screen until a few other drivers beat her out, the programming discarding her information once she became that nameless, unremarkable number eleven.

She dropped her hands into her lap and smiled to herself, kicking her feet breezily. Mikasa sat with her hands still clutched on the wheel, glaring at the words “SECOND PLACE” beaming in red on the screen.

“So?” Annie said.

A long silence. Then, “Let’s have you play something else.”

She took Annie by the hand, pulling her along the aisles in search of a game that would show off Annie’s “talents.”

“What do you mean talents?” she asked as Mikasa rushed her, full tilt, into the depths of the arcade.

“That. Play that,” Mikasa said at last, pointing to the rear wall. Centered there were two Dance Dance Revolution machines, pumping out poppy Japanese songs that entered Annie’s ears and coursed through her blood, energizing her like a sugar high. The two dance pads sat on raised platforms, the four arrows on each flashing in blue and pink, awaiting dancers to match their feet to the arrows scrolling up from the bottom of the TV screens.

“Are you playing too?” Annie asked. Unable to contain herself, she hopped onto the platform and began practicing her moves.

Mikasa fed in quarters as if she were reverently sacrificing money to the gods.

“No,” she said. “I can’t stand losing again.”

“Aw. Coward?”

“You have a bit of a genetic advantage,” Mikasa muttered darkly. “I’m observing today. But move over.”

“Huh?”

Mikasa hip-checked Annie off the dance pad and tapped her foot through the list of music. She picked a fast-paced song with an “EXPERT” difficulty.

“Should be easy for you,” Mikasa said.

A preview of the song’s arrow patterns played, and Annie’s legs twitched electric as she imagined her body dancing over the arrows, acing every combination. It would be easy. Child’s play, Annie thought.

“But,” Mikasa said gravely, “you can’t make _any_ mistakes.”

Annie gulped, her hands going clammy.

“Okay. I’ll try…”

She mounted the platform with sudden, awkward dread, desperate to not let Mikasa down, and, with all her nerves, missed the very first arrow by a mile. Mikasa made a scoffing noise from behind, and Annie winced, refocusing herself, determined to rack up the combos that popped up as she got more and more perfect timing.

Incredible. She kept on, no feeling of sweat drenching her back, as it did before her powers woke up, whenever she played kickball at school, or ran the half mile, or ran, a cowering wimp, from her bullies. She didn’t _have_ bullies now. She was different, a hidden monster, an upgraded version of her puny human self. Today, Annie was superhuman. And so, she danced.

In the end, she scored a golden “AA” score, whatever that meant, and Mikasa nodded absently, seeming bored despite Annie’s best efforts. Annie looked back at the screen. Hundreds of combos in a row. Mikasa was hard to please! Annie was about to tell her this when—

“Wanna go doubles?” a girl said from behind.

Annie turned to see Mikasa jump. The girl was hovering an inch behind Mikasa, had said the words into the shell of her ear. She was about their age, maybe older given her tall, lank frame, and when she stepped forward and swiped a length of brown hair from her tanned face, Annie saw freckles dotting her cheeks like constellations. She wore a confident grin, but what set alarm bells off shrieking in Annie’s head were the girl’s sharp, dark eyes. A predator’s eyes, ones that assessed prey and struck for the kill without a second thought. And they were boring into Annie’s head, without so much as a blink, without any disguise to their almost starved, proud malice. Annie quaked, unnaturally terrified of this interloper who launched herself over the pad’s railing and landed, catlike, on her feet.

“’Kay. Let me figure this out,” the girl said, at first unsure of the mechanics, until something clicked and lit up in her eyes, the rapid tapping of her foot guiding her through the long menu of songs. She went through the whole catalog twice, and at last landed on a song with a “CHALLENGE” difficulty, trumping the song Annie had danced to before.

“That’s hard,” Annie said and felt like an idiot for pointing it out.

The girl cocked her head with a smirk. “Should be easy for us,” she said.

“Um…”

Mikasa slipped behind Annie, shying away from the girl.

“You can do it,” she said in Annie’s ear.

Annie nodded, unsure.

When the song began, the sea of arrows surged without pause, and the music thundered, upbeat and frantic, the creepy crooning vocals of a lady in the chorus spiking chills through Annie’s blood. She missed several beats, tangling her limbs and tripping through the song which so outranked the last. In her panic, the sweat began to pour.

The girl next to her slammed her feet onto the platform, accruing perfect ratings that flashed up golden on the screen before her. Her movements made the hard plastic of the dance pad tremble beneath Annie’s feet, and she found herself stealing more and more frequent glances at her opponent.

The girl’s eyes held an aggressive concentration. Even as Annie’s score worsened, she appeared dead set on perfection, her feet hunting out the arrows without fail.

Then the girl then began to laugh uproariously, feet jarring the plastic beneath her, arms spread wide as she tilted and balanced her agile body. Her laugh came hard and cruel, but still the delight was there, the ease with which she danced and jumped all too apparent.

When the arrows lessened to the song’s conclusion, Annie collapsed back against the railing, panting, a defeated boxer swooning against the ropes. The girl next to her stood with her hands on her hips, no longer laughing, her breaths calm and even, her head nodding, with a slight, satisfied smile at the impossible “AAA” score that flashed before her.

Her eyes cut into Annie’s, as if she saw her, truly, for the first time, and she stalked onto Annie’s dance pad, her body so close, her hot breath hushed in Annie’s ear. Her voice coming out cold. “I smelled you in the barn. Such a _strange_ smell. Been looking for you.”

Annie tried to pull away. “What are you—”

The girl’s voice darkened, and her hand clamped tight on Annie’s bicep, drawing a yelp from Annie as she tried again to squirm away.

“Get off her!” Mikasa yelled.

The girl pitched her voice lower. “I know what you’re doing here. And I _don’t like it._ ”

“You’re hurting me! I… I don’t know you,” Annie said in a trembling voice.

“You will.” She released her arm, and a wolfish grin instantly masked her severe air. “I’ll see you around, Annie.”

Annie only shook her head in bewildered fear, at this girl she was sure she’d never seen before in her life.

“You too, _Ackerman_ ,” the girl said with a dismissive glance at Mikasa.

Light on her feet, she pranced away to leave the two staring at each other, dumbfounded.

“Was she…” Annie began, clutching at her throbbing arm.

“Annie. Look!” Mikasa pointed a shaking hand at the other girl’s dance pad. The hard plastic was run through with webs of deep, shattering cracks.

The first day of fifth grade, Annie and Mikasa walked in holding hands. The other students accepted the change, and Ms. Ral—looped as their teacher for a second year—only nodded at them with her usual gentle smile.

The only person who truly stared was little Historia Reiss, badly pretending to read her book in the seat behind Mikasa and Annie’s. Both of them knew Historia didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She was the kid who cried in sympathy when others got scraped up on the blacktop. The one who gravitated to the teacher if others raised their voices in anger. The one whose phobia of vampires led her to physically flee any conversation in which they were mentioned and hide in the bathrooms, crying.

Probably she was only curious about two girls dating, Annie told herself. Still, her owlish blue eyes burned into the back of Annie’s head, making her feel like she couldn’t have a private conversation with Mikasa. After their run-in with the dancing girl at the arcade, they’d had a long talk that lasted until Mrs. Ackerman came to finish their shopping.

“There are others like you,” Mikasa had said, leading them to bicker over why a vampire would be here in the human territory. And at that, why was Annie here?

Then there was another problem, one Annie wasn’t brave enough to bring up. Not yet. Because every time they parted, even a moment ago when Mikasa went out for a drink at the water fountain, Annie got a sick ache in her stomach and a droning in her ears, desperate for her to come back. It was not that she needed to see her or talk to her. It was that Annie became ravenous at the absence of Mikasa’s scent. When she returned, Annie’s hunger didn’t exactly dull, but she felt stronger somehow, more put together, when she could smell her. The obsessive dependence embarrassed her to no end.

Annie pushed it from her mind.

It was a new school year, and Mikasa had gifted her the dark blue plastic folders she’d used the year before. Annie eyed the cute kitty cat folders Mikasa had for fifth grade math and science, proud that she was embracing a more adorable aesthetic, down to the pretty pink blouse and slacks they’d gotten at the mall. Annie thought she looked beautiful.

Mikasa noticed her staring and gave her a warm little smile that made Annie blush.

When everyone settled in their seats, Ms. Ral got their attention with a clap of her hands.

“It’s so nice to see you all again! I hope you’re all as excited for fifth grade as I am. And we have a new student joining us this year!”

Kids exclaimed around them, riled up by the surprise.

“She should be here soon,” Ms. Ral said with a glance at the clock.

The door at the back of the classroom opened, sneakers stamping confidently across the hardwood to the front of the class.

Annie’s heart sank to her stomach.

“Hi,” the dancing girl said, happily rocking on her heels. Her eyes locked onto Annie’s. [“Name’s Ymir.”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25130038)

**Author's Note:**

> recovered audio files:  
> [1\. i slept all day, i woke with distaste](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5j_ThA3dgk&list=PL-ccf_7LhwSjbfCTCmBMBoCojTLGDEzgM)  
> [///2. and we see we are the same, the same but different](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tz4xJWbY9s&list=PL-ccf_7LhwSjbfCTCmBMBoCojTLGDEzgM&index=2)  
> //////[3\. i wanna end me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJqWZ3Zy5CU&list=PL-ccf_7LhwSjbfCTCmBMBoCojTLGDEzgM&index=4&t=0s)  
> [//4. there will be food in our mouths there will be teeth in the grass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IsW8_m0lm0&list=PL-ccf_7LhwSjbfCTCmBMBoCojTLGDEzgM&index=5&t=0s)  
> //[5\. and I'm not scared of your stolen power](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGAKiiUpvJ0&list=PL-ccf_7LhwSjbfCTCmBMBoCojTLGDEzgM&index=6&t=0s)  
> /////[6\. so i pull my curtains closed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyRWsWldouk&list=PL-ccf_7LhwSjbfCTCmBMBoCojTLGDEzgM&index=7&t=0s)  
> [//7. i feel...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0RPpD6OZqs&list=PL-ccf_7LhwSjbfCTCmBMBoCojTLGDEzgM&index=7)


End file.
